Wasatch Cache and Uinta National Forests

In partnership with: Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center and Utah State Parks.

 

 

 Avalanche ADVISORY

 

Good morning. This is Craig Gordon with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory for the western Uinta Mountains. Today is Wednesday, December 17, 2003 and it’s 7:30 a.m.

 

Current conditions:

Strong high pressure is building over the western states today, and while skies remained clear overnight temperatures are nearly 20 degrees warmer than yesterday at this time. Currently it’s in the low to mid 20’s at most mountaintop locations and winds are out of the northwest at speeds of 15-25 mph along the upper elevation ridges.  No new snow has fallen in the past 24 hrs and snow totals from the Sunday night storm increase with elevation and have settled out to about 10” in depth above 9,000’. The winds have had their way in the more exposed locations, though in wind sheltered terrain the riding and turning conditions are quite good.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

The Sunday/Monday storm turned out to be quite the wind event, especially in the upper elevations above timberline, and yesterday I saw plenty of evidence of natural avalanche activity that occurred during the storm.  The common theme with these slides was they were occurring in heavily wind loaded, steep rocky upper elevation terrain, where the existing snowpack was shallow and weak.  While the natural avalanche cycle has come and gone there are still plenty of slopes out there waiting for the right trigger to come along and tip the scales.  Be aware that slabs have formed in some unusual locations due to the strength of the wind. The most common places would be on the lee side of ridges and around terrain features such as chutes, gullies and sub-ridges. Also I was finding the slab to be a little further down slope then one might expect.

In steep wind-sheltered terrain, the new light density snow is sluffing easily on Saturday’s rain crust and is generally a non-issue unless one knocks you off your machine or skis.

 

Bottom Line:

In wind-sheltered terrain, and at low and mid elevations the avalanche danger is generally LOW today. Both natural and human triggered avalanches are unlikely.

At upper elevations, above timberline the avalanche danger is “scary” MODERATE today on any steep slope with recent deposits of wind-drifted snow. Human triggered avalanches will be possible. In steep rocky terrain today’s avalanches have the possibility of breaking into deeper, buried weak layers producing a larger avalanche than you might expect.

 

Mountain Weather:

Mostly sunny skies and warming temperatures are on tap for the region through Friday. Today we can expect highs at 10,000’ to be in the upper 20’s and at 8,000’ in the mid 30’s. Overnight lows will be near 20 degrees. Winds will become light and variable as the day progresses blowing at speeds of 5-15 mph along the ridges. Thursday and Friday we should see clear skies with daytime highs in the low 40’s. A weak weather system is scheduled to move into the area late Friday followed by a slightly stronger storm on Sunday.

 

General Information: 

We can always use snow and avalanche information and your observations are an important component to this program. So if you see or trigger an avalanche give us a call at 801-231-2170 or 1-800-662-4140.

Also, if you’d like to schedule a free avalanche awareness talk and/or field day give us a call at 801-524-5304.

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.

This advisory will be updated by 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Thanks for calling.