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
Monday,
March 19, 2007 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with
the
RECORD BREAKING
WARM TEMPERATURES CONTINUES TO WARRANT A SPECIAL AVALANCHE STATEMENT FOR THE
MOUNTAINS OF
Current Conditions:
Skies are clear and
winds are light from the west. Few
stations dropped below freezing in the mountains overnight after highs
yesterday in the mid to upper 50’s.
Clear skies will have aided the refreeze, but it’ll be another
early-bird gets the worm strategy for supportable corn. Soft settled powder remains on the high
north with good corn on the off aspects.
Snow and Avalanche Discussion:
Explosive testing
continues to produce impressive, yet spotty results in upper elevation east to
northeast facing slopes. Most of the
mountain resorts are managing to crow-bar out a couple wet slabs 2-3’ deep, but
the most impressive slides came out at Park City in the main Jupiter Bowl and
Scott Bowl just to the north. Six pound
air blasts pulled out two
large wet slab avalanches 3-5’ to the ground, running on damp to saturated
facets and depth hoar. The Scott Bowl
slide broke 6-700’ wide, and it was noted that a lost ski from earlier in the
season popped out onto the bed surface above the debris. Bruce went to take a look at the slides and
his photos can be found here.
In my experience, wet
slab avalanches can be the most difficult to forecast, particularly with this
snow structure. It’s usually more about
decreased strength of the snowpack, rather than increased stress through rapid
loading as we all know and love for cold snow avalanches. And there are plenty of black holes in the
snow. Cornices will continue to be
sensitive and glide avalanches in Stairs, Broad’s Fork and Mill B South are
likely over the next couple of days as well.
Don’t tarry – get out
of the house and up in the hills and then home for golf by noon. Work the aspects, start east, then south,
then west, and leave the area when you’re starting to move some wet snow down
the slope. Be particularly skeptical of
areas with a thin snowpack and thin refreeze.
It just takes a quick plunge of the ski or probe pole to see the depth
of refreeze and depth altogether. Don’t
be fooled by the superficial refreezes in some areas, which may hide saturated
glop underneath. It’s just a wolf in
sheep’s clothing.
Bottom Line for the
The avalanche danger
will again rise to CONSIDERABLE and perhaps HIGH today on all steep sun-exposed
slopes. All aspects are capable of
producing large, longer running avalanches.
Hedge your bets by getting off the steeper stuff before the intense heat
of the day.
Mountain Weather:
We’ll have clear skies
and light backing winds to the southwest.
8000’ and 10,000’ highs will reach into the 50’s and 40’s yet
again. The storm pattern for Tuesday
night is up to its old tricks again, as it splits, forming a cut-off Low over
Baja. Should still be enough for a few
inches of snow in the mountains and a quick return to winter. Temps drop to the upper teens.
Announcements:
The Wasatch Powderbird
Guides didn’t get out yesterday and are unlikely to get out today. For
more info, call 742-2800.
The UAC and ACE are offering a day long Women’s Avalanche
Awareness class at Alta on March 22nd covering beacon use and basic
safe travel, terrain and snowpack information, for $30. For more details go to: www.altaarts.org.
Listen to the
advisory. Try our new streaming audio or
podcasts
UDOT highway avalanche
control work info can be found HERE
or by calling (801)
975-4838.
Our
statewide tollfree line is 1-888-999-4019 (early morning, 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 all the great
snowpack and avalanche observations we’ve been getting, so keep leaving us
messages 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 Tuesday morning, and
thanks for calling.