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
Wednesday,
January 10, 2007 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Brett Kobernik with
the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and
mountain weather advisory. Today is Wednesday, January 10, 2007 and it’s
7:30 in the morning.
UDOT will be sighting in a weapon in
Current Conditions:
Temperatures remained
warm overnight and are in the upper 20s to low 30s out of the valley bottoms. Southwest winds are picking up and are
blowing in the 40s to 50s along the most exposed locations but are generally in
the 10 to 15 mph range along the mid elevation ridges. As for snow surface conditions, one person
described it as a “crust buffet” with a wide variety of wind crusts, melt
freeze crusts, and a nice thin rime crust that formed in the upper elevations
of the Cottonwood canyons on Monday. If
you’re savvy, you can still find settled powder out of wind affected areas.
Snowpack and Avalanche Conditions:
It was another quiet
day in the backcountry on Tuesday except a few minor wet slides (PHOTO)
that released on southerly facing slopes.
One of our observers did experience some significant collapsing on a
southeast aspect while they were climbing out of Snake Creek. This is a friendly reminder of the weak snow
that exists throughout our snowpack.
For today the main
concern will be the minor chance of finding a slab to release in steep wind
drifted areas. While the winds will be
from the southwest, most southerly facing slopes have a melt freeze crust which
will prevent much snow transport.
Nevertheless, always watch for plumes coming off of ridges and peaks
which indicate which slope aspects are getting loaded. The older wind slabs seem stuck in place for
the most part but there may be a few areas where you could get one to pop out.
Bottom Line for the
Most terrain has a LOW avalanche danger.
There is a pockety MODERATE danger on
wind drifted slopes steeper than about 35 degrees and more pronounced on north
through east facing slopes.
Mountain Weather:
Clouds will increase
throughout the day as well as southwesterly winds which will blow in the 10 to
20 mph range with gusts in the 40s and 50s at the more exposed locations. Temperatures will remain warm and at 8000
feet will be near 40 degrees and in the low 30s in the 9 to 10,000 foot range. A storm will move through starting late
tonight and linger into Saturday. It
doesn’t look like a whopper but we should see 6 to 12 inches on Thursday. Most mountain areas in the state of
Announcements:
The Wasatch Powderbird Guides were in Cardiff, Days, Mineral, Silver,
Grizzly, and Cascade on Tuesday and if the weather allows they’ll be in
Mineral, Cardiff, Days, Silver, Grizzly, American Fork in the Mill Canyon area,
White Pine, Cascade and the Sessions Mountains in Bountiful.
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.
Bruce Tremper will update this advisory by 7:30 on Wednesday morning,
and thanks for calling.