In partnership with: Utah Division of State
Parks and Recreation, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department
of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and
AVALANCHE ADVISORY
Thursday,
March 16, 2006 7:30 am
Good morning, this is
Current Conditions:
Announcement:
UDOT will
conduct avalanche control in Stairs Gulch in
Yesterday morning’s cold
front blasted through with snowfall rates of several inches per hour. It quickly laid down a foot to a half of snow
in the north part of
Recent Avalanche Activity & Snowpack Discussion:
Not surprisingly, yesterday
morning’s intense snowfall and wind produced a widespread cycle of sluffs and
occasional soft slab avalanches within the new snow on most steep slopes. (PHOTOS) I was
happy to see that they were not breaking deeper beneath the stiff wind slabs
created by Tuesday’s very strong wind and I hope that trend will continue
today. I expect that most of the
instabilities within the new snow will have settled out overnight. Still, I’m suspicious about all the recent
wind and snow and I’m sure there are a few pockets that you can pop out,
especially on the upper elevation, wind exposed, steep slopes. If they do break beneath Tuesday’s wind
slabs, they will be big avalanches—around 2-3 feet deep and they will likely
break above you. So be sure to practice
all your safe travel ritual like one-at-a-time and practice good slope cut techniques.
Also, the ridge top winds should blow from the southwest today around 10-15 mph
with higher gusts and they will create some localized, fresh wind drifts along
the wind exposed ridges. As always, you
should avoid any steep slope with recent wind drifts.
Finally, if we get sun today, we will have more damp to wet sluffs on the steep
southerly-facing slopes.
Bottom Line:
The avalanche danger is MODERATE on all slopes steeper than 35 degrees with pockets of CONSIDERABLE on the more extreme, upper elevation
terrain.
Mountain Weather:
Today should be a rest day with high clouds and ridge top winds from the
southwest 10-15 mph and ridge top temperatures around 19 degrees. Down at 8,000’ the temperatures should rise
to the mid 20’s. For the next several
days, we have a large trough diving mostly south of us, which should wrap the
moisture around it and bring our flow up from the south with clouds and
occasional snow showers starting on Friday and continuing through about
Wednesday.
Announcements:
An initial report from the Snowbasin backcountry
incident can be found here.
Here is a great link to a web site on avalanche beacon information, created by
a person who did independent research and testing of avalanche beacons. http://beaconreviews.com
There are several free automated avalanche
beacon practice areas open, including one at Canyons, one on the by-pass road
near Snowbird, one in the northwest corner of the lower lot at Solitude, and at
the Nobletts parking area on the
Early birds and snow geeks can catch our 6AM report at 364-1591.
Click here to check out our new online avalanche
encyclopedia.
Click HERE for a text only
version of the avalanche advisory.
To have this advisory automatically e-mailed to you each day, click HERE.
UDOT also has a highway avalanche
control work hotline for Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood, and
The Wasatch Powderbird Guides will be in Mineral,
Please report any backcountry snow and avalanche conditions. Call (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, email [email protected] or fax 801-524-6301. The information in this advisory is from the
U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche
conditions and local variations always occur.
Brett Kobernik will update this
advisory by 7:30 Friday morning. Thanks for calling.