The First Annual Avalanche Awareness Week is December 2-7 We have a week full of fun and educational events planned. Check out the schedule here.

The annual free Know Before You Go avalanche awareness talk will be held at the Grand County Library on Thursday, Dec 5 at 6:00 p.m. Hope to see you there!

Clouds will build today as the next storm system approaches our area. We'll see a chance of showers later today with SW winds averaging 15-20 mph along ridge tops. high temps at 10,000' will be around 30 degrees. The real action starts late tonight and we should get a good shot of snow out of this. It looks like 6"-10" with maybe up to a foot possible.

It was a wild Thanksgiving week in the Abajos with lots of snow and wind. A storm on Tuesday and a two-part storm over Thanksgiving brought 3'-4' to the mountains and coverage is the best I have seen for this time of year. Strong winds from all directions have taken a bit of a toll leaving some exposed slopes blasted down to the grass while leaving others remarkably intact. Soft, settled powder can still be found however in many locations.

In our travels Sunday we saw evidence of cracking and slab failure that had occurred during the storm but we saw no actual avalanches, and instabilities within the storm snow had settled out. We noted the presence of wind drifts on steep slopes that should still be avoided, but overall we found a mostly strong snowpack devoid of reactive weak layers. At 10.000' we measured 62" of snow. Travis Nauman, on the other hand, sent in this observation where he noted the presence of reactive weak layers on NE aspect around 9000' which is certainly a cause for concern. We currently have very limited data and until we gather more, a slope by slope analysis will need to conducted before venturing on to steep, northerly facing terrain.

NWS Weather Forecast.