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,
April 06, 2006 7:30 am
Good morning, this is
Current Conditions:
After a couple days of
crying wolf, the big low pressure system is finally, finally starting to kick
in. Overnight, the Cottonwood Canyons
got 4-5 inches of snow, which is a dense 12 percent water at 8,000’ and around
10 percent above 10,000’. Temperatures
have finally dropped to the mid 20’s. Yesterday
morning ranked high in the annals of suffering and misery with soggy, gloppy snow
mixed with breakable crust, light rain and gloomy clouds but hey, at least you
had the pleasure of dodging lightning bolts along with high winds and squalls
of graupel that would sting your face.
Inexplicably, the backcountry seemed deserted. In the afternoon, about 3-4 inches of dense
snow fell at higher elevations with rain below about 8,000’.
Recent Avalanche Activity & Snowpack Discussion:
If an avalanche falls in
the mountains and there’s no one there to see it, is it still an
avalanche? Yesterday was a good day to
find out because the only people wandering around in the backcountry were paid
to be there—and not enough, I might add.
Nevertheless, it appeared that very few avalanches occurred yesterday,
just a little cracking of new wind slabs along the exposed ridges (PHOTOS).
Today may be a different story. We
expect 8-12 inches of new snow today with strong winds from the northwest. This will almost certainly create some
widespread, sensitive wind slabs on any steep, wind drifted slope. The snow will be dense. The slabs will pack a punch and could easily
tangle you up and drag you down the hill.
As always, you should avoid all steep slopes with recent deposits of
wind drifted snow. Down out of the wind,
I expect that the new snow will bond fairly well to the pre-existing, wet snow
surface, but as always, there may be density inversions within the new snow and
you should test for these by jumping on test slopes, doing slope cuts and
pulling on blocks that you cut out with your hand.
Bottom Line:
New snow and wind will cause the avalanche danger to rise rapidly today
from LOW
danger this morning to CONSIDERABLE danger later in the day on any
steep slope with recent deposits of wind drifted snow. There will be a MODERATE
danger on non-wind drifted slopes.
Mountain Weather:
As moisture wraps around
the top of the low pressure center, we should have snow impact northern
Friday, the skies should clear and temperatures will warm up to near freezing,
which should give us a round of wet sluffs on Friday. Then, the weekend looks warm with high clouds
and we should have another weaker storm on Monday and Tuesday.
Announcements:
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 did not fly yesterday and won’t fly today. For more info, call 742-2800.
Special announcement:
The
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.