Sunshine and warmer temperatures are on tap. After 11 days of clear skies and cold single digit temperatures, today is expected to be the warmest day since the Northwest winds ripped though during the end of February. Winds are slated to be calm to light from the South and should let the sun do its thing on East, South and West aspects – meaning warm things up to the 20’sF or higher. Keep a close eye on any warming taking place on the snow surface. Soft snow still sits on many slopes and roller balls and wet loose avalanches could occur in these areas. Slopes with old sun crusts or wind slabs/crusts will take much more than the warming today to effect.
Other things to keep in mind if you are headed to the mountains to enjoy these long sunny days:
Glide Avalanches:
Glide cracks continue to slowly open above popular terrain on Seattle Ridge and in other areas of the advisory area. These could release at any time, watch for these cracks and avoid being under them.
Wind Slabs:
Old and hard winds slabs are easy to find but for the most part they are locked into place. Steep rocky areas, where they are not supported from below, will be the most suspect zones for someone to pop one out.
Loose Snow Avalanches (Sluffs):
Watch your sluff. Dry sluffs on steep slopes are probable and are getting larger by the day. And, as mentioned above, wet loose (or damp) sluffs, both natural and human triggered, may occur.
Cornices:
Cornices may start to loosen with the warming – as always, give these monsters a wide berth from above and limit exposure time traveling underneath.
Persistent Slabs and Deep Slabs:
There are various weak layers in our thin snowpack. Buried surface hoar sits 1-3+’ below the surface and faceted snow sits in the mid and base of the pack. These weak layers with varying degrees of strength are in a dormant stage due to plenty of time to adjust with a lack of changing weather. Although this means the layers are not producing avalanches, it doesn’t mean an outlier can’t occur which could cause a large avalanche breaking deeper in the pack.
The most interesting glide crack of the season sits just to the looker’s left of the motoroized up track. We are following this one closely to see if and when it will releases.
A look at Tincan Ridge from the motorized side of the road. Sun crusts are becomming more prevolent, although plenty of soft ‘recycled powder’ is still to be found.
A quick look at the Turnagain Pass snowpack from the Center Ridge SNOTEL site. Our snowpack is just over half of normal for this time of year.
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