The mountains picked up about 5-8" of new, dense snow yesterday continuing to smooth out last week's widespread crusty surface. Old tracks are disappearing, and the dense new snow is supportable. Today's best riding conditions are on sheltered low-angle slopes away from the wind, where the new snow is stacking up, and there's less chance to hit last week's crusty surface. On upper and mid-elevation slopes steeper than 30°, you could trigger wind slab avalanches of freshly drifted snow or soft slab avalanches of new snow. At low elevations, you may encounter wet avalanches on steep slopes with saturated snow.
The wind is blowing from the south-southeast this morning at 32 mph with gusts up to 50 mph at the 9700' CSI Logan Peak weather station where it's 25° F. On Paris Peak at 9500', it’s 24° F, and the wind is blowing 5 mph from the south. The Tony Grove Snotel at 8400' reports 29° F and received 5-8 inches of new snow in the last 24 hours with .8" SWE. The station reports 79 inches of total snow, containing 119% of the average SWE (Snow Water Equivalent).
Today, it'll be cloudy and mild in the mountains with a high at 8500' of 34° F and light snowfall. Winds are expected to temper and remain around 15-20 mph from the south. The next wave of moisture arrives this afternoon, and the mountains could get more than a foot of snow by Thursday morning. The temperatures will drop throughout the week with high's in the 20's F and lows in the single digits F by Thursday night into the weekend.
No avalanches were reported yesterday.
Check out local observations and avalanches
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