Wasatch Cache National Forest
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 Salt Lake County.

“keeping you on top”

AVALANCHE ADVISORY

Monday, January 21, 2008 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory. Today is Monday, January 21, 2008 and it’s about 7:30 am.

Current Conditions:

Imagine most of the snow and weather folks standing around alternating glances at their watches and the sky. That was the scene for most of the afternoon and evening until around midnight when it started to snow. As of 5:30 this morning, the Park City and Little Cottonwood totals are 3-5”. Big Cottonwood Canyon, and the Provo and Ogden area mountains, benefiting from a southwesterly flow, picked up 8-10”. Densities are in the 5-7% range, and it’s still snowing. Temps are in the teens enroute the single digits, and the winds should continue to spike for another couple hours, then drop down to less than 15-20mph.

Avalanche Discussion:

We’re already into a mini-natural cycle in the storm snow with heavy snowfall rates and a burst in ridgetop winds. Many steep cutbanks have released, and we can assume that this is indicative of many of the steepest starting zones along the range. Drifting is occurring in the high terrain and will be more common on the northerly slopes, though you should anticipate some crossloading in the deceleration zones in the more open terrain. Sluffing and storm snow avalanches will be the main gig for the backcountry traveler. These will be quite active and sensitive today, with the smoke moving just off your board(s) or machines in the steep terrain.

The old snow surfaces are quite variable, which will reflect the avalanche pattern. It’ll bond poorly to the localized areas of surface hoar and polished wind features, but fairly well to settled snow and the recent temperature crusts. This will vary widely over a short distance. Test slopes and ski cuts will offer excellent clues on the stability and it would be a good idea to watch for the extent of sluffing and moving snow if moving through the steeper terrain. I’d imagine such terrain as the Y couloir, a steep narrow confined chute, would be a poor choice this morning.

Bottom Line for the Ogden, Salt Lake, Park City and Provo area mountains:

The avalanche danger is spiking to CONSIDERABLE this morning with the heavy snowfall and gusty southwesterly winds. Natural activity within the new snow will continue to be likely, until settling out with relaxed snowfall rates and winds. The overall stability is likely to increase throughout the day, except in areas underlain by surface hoar or faceted snow, found in localized protected areas. Many areas will just not have a ‘slab’, and will continue to sluff when provoked.

Mountain Weather:

We’ll continue to see good snowfall through the morning with likely even storm snow totals of up to 16” or so. The winds should start to veer to the northwest over the next few hours and blow 20mph or less along even the exposed ridgelines. As the present Low pressure system retrogrades back to the west, a shortwave ridge moves in through early Thursday. The same system then moves back through with continued storms over the weekend and the early part of next week.

Announcements
The Wasatch Powderbird Guides didn’t get out yesterday, and are unlikely to get out today. If they get a window, they’ll be in American Fork and the Bountiful Sessions. For more information, call them at 801-742-2800, or go to their daily blog.

On Thursday, January 24^th, there will be a panel discussion on risk and decision making in outdoor activities, which should be very interesting. It will be at the Salt Lake Downtown Library at 7:00 pm and it will also be broadcast on KCPW.

The second annual avalanche awareness snowmobile ride is Saturday, February 2^nd and proceeds will help support snowmobile specific avalanche awareness projects. Details can be found at http://www.avarides.com/

Backcountry Awareness Week is February 8-10^th, featuring a Friday night fundraising dinner with guest speaker David Oliver Relin, author of the New York Times bestseller (50 weeks and counting) Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time and avalanche awareness clinics on Saturday and Sunday, all held at Snowbird.  For more information, call 933-2147 or go to http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/fuac-events.htm.

If you want to get this avalanche advisory e-mailed to you daily click HERE.
UDOT highway avalanche control work info can be found by calling (801) 975-4838.
Our statewide tollfree line is 1-888-999-4019 (early morning, option 8).

The UAC depends on contributions from users like you to support our work.  To find out more about how you can support our efforts to continue providing the avalanche forecasting and education that you expect please visit our Friends page.

If you see any avalanches or interesting snow conditions, 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 Tuesday morning.