In partnership with: Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center and Utah State Parks.
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 Sunday, January 4, 2004 and it’s 7:30
a.m.
Current conditions:
Under partly cloudy skies temperatures bottomed out
last night and currently it’s a toe numbing –5 degrees at 10,000’. To add
insult to injury the winds are out of the northwest with hourly averages in the
20’s and gusts in the low 30’s along the ridges. We’ve received 3” of new snow
in the past 24 hours, though recent winds have damaged a lot of the upper
elevation terrain surrounding the region, forming a punchy slab on top of
lighter density snow. This all adds up to machine burying, trail breaking
nightmares. However, excellent riding and turning conditions can be found on
wind-sheltered, mid elevation slopes.
Avalanche Conditions:
It’s been pretty exciting in terms of avalanche
activity in the region over the past few days and with a little visibility
yesterday it was obvious we’ve gone through a fairly widespread natural
avalanche cycle. Many of the big peaks woke up and shrugged their shoulders
resulting in a number of large, deep, tree snapping avalanches. I’d suspect
that these avalanches ran during the New Years Day wind event. One of the more impressive slides I saw was off
of the north face of Murdock Mountain. This avalanche was about 4’ deep, 300’
wide, and ran close to 800’ vertically. In addition to plenty of natural
avalanche activity, a snowcat working in the Thousand Peaks area was able to
sympathetically release 3 deep pockets. These avalanches were running fast and
far, overtaking traditional ‘safe zones’. As has been the case with most of the
bigger avalanche activity we’ve seen this year, all of these slides were running
on facets near the ground, on steep north, northeast, and east facing slopes,
above about 10,000’ in elevation, in terrain that had a shallow, weak
pre-existing snowpack.
While I think the natural avalanche activity is
beginning to wane the fact of the matter is we’ve added a lot of weight in a
short period of time to a relatively weak snowpack. It will take sometime for
the pack to heal and adjust. Triggering a slide today in steep, upper elevation
terrain could have devastating consequences. Once triggered these hard slab avalanches
have the possibility of propagating long distances and stepping into weaker
layers buried in the snowpack. This combination would produce a large and dangerous
avalanche.
I’d play it safe for the next couple of days and
watch my slope angles and steer my skis towards mid and low elevation slopes
where even the low angle terrain is fast and fun.
Bottom Line:
The avalanche danger is CONSIDERABLE today on all steep slopes at and above timberline,
especially those with recent deposits of wind-drifted snow. Human triggered
avalanches are probable.
At mid elevations the avalanche danger is MODERATE today on all steep slopes
with recent deposits of wind-drifted snow. Human triggered avalanches are
possible.
At low elevations and on slopes less than 30 degrees
in steepness the avalanche danger is generally LOW.
Mountain Weather:
A very cold
somewhat moist northwest flow will be over the region today. We can expect
increasing clouds and light snow showers with 1”-3” of snow both today and
again tonight. Temperatures will be quite cold with highs at 10,000’ near zero
and at 8,000’ in the mid single digits. Overnight lows at 8,000’ will near –5 degrees.
Winds will be relaxing and switching to the west later this morning at should
remain in the 10-20 mph range for the remainder of the day. High pressure
begins to build on Monday bringing in clearing skies and slightly warmer
temperatures. A weak system should brush by the area Tuesday and Wednesday
producing scattered snow showers.
General Information:
We can always use snow and avalanche information and
your snowpack and avalanche observations could help to save someone’s life! 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 Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004.
Thanks for
calling.