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Cache National Forest
In partnership with: The Friends of the Utah
The Utah Avalanche Center Home page is: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/
Avalanche advisory
Thursday,
April 17, 2003
Good Afternoon. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
Kind of a
blah, cloudy and warm in the mountains today with frozen conditions in
the morning, once again, and softening up in the afternoon, which is pretty
much standard fare for mid April. The daytime
high on today was in the mid 40’s around 8,000’ and the upper 20’s at 11,000’. There’s a slim band of dry snow left on
straight north facing slopes above 10,000’, but everything else is either has
various kinds of sun crusts or is mushy.
Avalanche Conditions:
Although things were very
quiet today, we do have a storm on our doorstep. With a solid underlying snowpack, Friday’s
avalanche conditions will depend entirely on what the storm does. My guess is that the new snow will stick
fairly well to the wet snow but it will tend to sluff off more easily when it
falls on the hard, frozen crusts. In
other words, at lower elevation areas and south facing slopes the new snow will
fall on a wet surface while at upper elevations and north facing slopes the new
snow will tend to fall on a hard, frozen surface, where it may be a little more
active. Unless the wind blows very hard,
the new snow should be soft, shallow and easy to deal with. Any avalanches will probably be just loose
snow sluffs and any slabs will mostly break at your feet instead of above
you. If the winds blow hard, then the
resulting wind slabs will be harder and break farther above you, but I’m not
expecting particularly strong winds or a lot of new snow, so I’m expecting that
things will be fairly benign, but remember that weather forecasting is often
wrong, so if we do get more snow or wind that I think, you should bump the
danger ratings up by a no
Probably more importantly, if
we do get sun or warmer temperatures during the day on Friday, any new snow
will form damp to wet sluffs on the steep, sun exposed slopes, so wa
Remember that we are no
longer giving morning updates so on Friday morning, you should probably check
the web sites to see how much snow fell and what the winds did overnight. You can check National Weather Service - Salt
Lake City - Snow.
Bottom Line (SLC,
As
new snow accumulates, the avalanche danger will rise from LOW to MODERATE on any steep slope
with more than about 6 inches of new snow or any steep slope with recent wind
drifts. With any daytime heating by the
sun, the danger will rise to MODERATE
on any steep sun exposed slope.
Western Uinta Mountains: Click Here
Logan – call 435-797-4146 or Click Here.
Mountain Weather:
The snow should begin this evening
complete with the chance of lightning.
Ridge top winds will turn from south to northwesterly by morning and
blow 15-20 mph with stronger gusts. We
should get a bit of a break late tonight and early Friday morning with another
shot later on Friday. Then things should
be clearing out on Saturday morning. I’m
not expecting a lot of snow out of this storm,
probably around 6 inches in most upper elevation areas and the snow should be
fairly dense. Ridge top temperatures tonight
will be around 18 degrees and rise into the mid to upper 20’s on Friday. 8,000’ temperatures should be in the mid 20’s
overnight and in the mid 30’s on Friday.
For the extended forecast, we have a nice weekend with warm temperatures
and then another storm on Monday and Tuesday.
General Information:
To report backcountry snow
and avalanche conditions, especially if you observe or trigger an avalanche, call
(801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or email to [email protected]
or fax to 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.
Ethan Greene will update this advisory on Friday
afternoon.
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: