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
“keeping
you on top”
AVALANCHE ADVISORY
Thursday,
December 14, 2006 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Bruce Tremper with
the
An avalanche
watch has been issued for the Logan-area mountains
including the Wellsville and
Current Conditions:
The fire hose has been
trained on the Logan-area mountains and Ben Lomond Peak for the past couple
days and they have received 1.4 inches of water weight in the past day and over
2 inches of water in the past two days.
In areas south of there, we have only added a measly .3 inches of water
weight in the past day and .7 or less from the storm so far. Yesterday was a rather miserable day in the
mountains with poor visibility, rain and wet, mashed potatoes snow below about
8,500’ along and dense, wind-blown snow at higher elevations. To make matters worse, temperatures have
continued to rise overnight with the rain-snow line expected to be around 8,500’
today and the winds have picked up to 30, gusting to 60 on the highest ridges.
Snowpack and Avalanche Conditions:
In the Salt Lake, Park
City and Provo area mountains, although there is a lot of weak, faceted snow
buried in our shallow, anemic snowpack, there just isn’t enough weight on top
to make things sensitive. On the other
hand, the mountains north of
If you would like to know how to test for instabilities within new snow, here
are some great demos of the shovel tilt test, which also works well to reveal
the weaknesses in the upper pack. (PHOTO) (Quicktime video, 5.3mb),
Bottom Line:
Mountains south of
Mountains north of Ogden including Ben
Lomond and Logan: the avalanche danger is on all slopes steeper than about 35
degrees is CONSIDERABLE today and may
rise to HIGH
with additional snow and wind today. We
have issued an avalanche watch for this area, meaning that you should watch out
for rising avalanche danger.
Mountain Weather:
We will have
Oregon-like weather today with cloudy skies and light rain below about 8,500’
with a couple inches of dense snow at higher elevations. Ridge top winds will pick up and blow around
30 mph from the west with 40, gusting to 60 on the highest peaks. Temperatures will reach their maximum on
Friday morning, when the freezing level will rise above 9,000’ with 40 mph
winds from the southwest. Then, the
temperatures will start to fall with a strong, but quick-hitting cold front coming
through on about Saturday morning. We
may get 8 inches of snow from the cold front and temperatures by Saturday
afternoon will plunge to the single digits.
After that, we have a complex, closed low over our area for a couple
days, which are notoriously hard to forecast, but right now we don’t see any
significant precipitation after Saturday’s cold front.
Announcements:
I will teach an avalanche awareness class at the
Listen to the
advisory. Try our new streaming audio or
podcasts
Our new,
state wide tollfree hotline is 1-888-999-4019.
(For early morning detailed avalanche activity report hit option 8)
For a list of avalanche
classes, click HERE
For our classic text
advisory click HERE.
To sign up
for automated e-mails of our graphical advisory click HERE
We appreciate any
snowpack and avalanche observations you have, so please leave us a message at
(801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or email us at [email protected]. (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 on Friday morning.