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

Saturday, April 05, 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 Saturday, April 05, 2008 and it’s about 7:30 am.

Current Conditions:

The skies have filled back in under something trying to pass itself off as a storm. You could see it coming yesterday, the high clouds, and gustier westerly winds, which kept a lid on the wet activity. We’re seeing a couple inches up high so far, with westerly winds blowing in the 10-15mph range. Temperatures are in the upper teens up high and upper twenties down low. The new veneer’ll be like lipstick on a pig, but if you push to the high northerly aspects, you’ll find decent settled powder.

Snow and Avalanche Discussion:

It was mostly quiet in the backcountry yesterday, with some minor wet and dry sluffing in the upper layers of the snow. Yesterday’s field day to upper White Pine can be found here. If we see more than just a few inches today, watch for sluffing in the new snow on the steepest slopes, as the new snow may not bond all to well to some of the old existing snow surfaces. (See the gallery.) The wet activity should be locked up today, so we’ll just be concerned for in shallow surface instabilities in the more radical terrain.

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

The avalanche danger is LOW. Keep an eye on the sluffing potential if we pick up a few more inches of snow.

Mountain Weather:

We’ll see periods of light snowfall throughout the day before clearing out late this afternoon. Winds will be light with occasional gusts to the mid-20’s, and temps will be in the low 20’s at 10,000’ and low 30’s at 8000’. We may look to get a little more snow tomorrow with a better defined storm for Monday. Unsettled weather and cooler temperatures are expected to persist through the week.

Announcements

Our partners, the Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, with the Canyons Professional Ski Patrol Association, will be hosting a joint fundraising event Sunday, April 6^th, at 8:30 pm, at Harry O's in Park City, 427 Main Street, for the UAC and Canyons Professional Ski Patrol Association. There will be a raffle with gift certificates from Backcountry.com and an awesome silent auction. The house will be rocking with Space Patrol opening for Junior and Transportation. We hope to see you there!

The Wasatch Powderbird Guides skied in Days, Mineral and Cardiff yesterday, and have as an itinerary today (weather permitting) to be in will be in Mineral, Cardiff, Days, Silver and Mill Creek with home runs through White Pine and Grizzly. For more detailed information please call (801) 742-2800 or go to their daily blog.

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).

Watch video tututorials and fieldwork from UAC staff at our YouTube channel.

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.

I will update this advisory by 7:30 on Sunday morning.