In partnership with: Utah Division of State
Parks and Recreation, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department
of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and
“keeping
you on top”
AVALANCHE ADVISORY
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I’ll be giving a free avalanche awareness talk at the SLC REI tomorrow
night at 7pm. For more info, call the
SLC REI.
Monday,
November 27, 2006 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with
the
We have issued an AVALANCHE WATCH for the mountains of northern
Current Conditions:
The first few flakes
are falling in the mountains this morning ahead of what looks to be a monster
storm for northern
Snowpack and Avalanche Conditions:
As we’re expected to
see 4-6” today with stronger southwesterly winds, it’ll be a day of transition
with the danger on the rise. The new
snow will bond poorly on many of the upper elevation slopes of bullet-proof
wind board and will likely sluff immediately and far on the steepest
slopes. New sensitive wind drifts will
also develop on the mid and upper elevation lee slopes and will initially be
most pronounced on the north through east facing slopes. The snow may bond best to the warmer, rough
snow landscape on the south-facing areas, but it may all be academic with heavy
bursts of snow tonight and tomorrow with forecasted storm totals over two feet
in many locations.
By the time it’s all
said and done, we’ll likely have run the gamut of avalanche types, from loose
and storm snow avalanches, sensitive wind drifts with the potential for
remotely triggered slides where the snow comes in on the pockety faceted
surface snow on the protected shady aspects.
Lastly, it may be enough of a load to reactivate the basal depth hoar
for step-down avalanches to run.
If you head out into
the backcountry, you’ll need to exercise caution by moving through protected
terrain and putting one person on a steep slope at a time. Offensive tactics like slope cuts and cornice
drops should prove effective with the new snow instabilities.
Bottom Line:
A LOW
avalanche danger this morning will rise to MODERATE today in
upper elevation terrain that sees the most snow. Watch for immediate sluffing and developing
wind drifts on the slick old bed surfaces on the steepest slopes.
Mountain Weather:
We’re in for cold,
stormy conditions through Wednesday with storm totals up an over two feet in
favored locations. The pre-frontal winds
will blow from the southwest today in the 25-30mph range with occasional gusts
into the 60’s. Frontal passage will be
in the early evening which should drop snow levels to the valley floor. Cold air aloft and lake enhanced snowfall
should keep the hose on through Wednesday.
Brief ridging moves in late in the week ahead of a couple of smaller
disturbances over the weekend.
Announcements:
Our partners,
the FUAC, will hold their next fundraiser at Brewvies on Dec 7th.
There will be two showings of TGR’s new film, “The Anomaly”, at 7pm and
9pm. Advance tickets are available.
We appreciate any
snowpack and avalanche observations, so please let us know by calling (801)
524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, email uac@avalanche.org
or fax 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.
Bruce Tremper will
update this advisory by 7:30 on Tuesday morning and thanks for calling.