Our weather will be slightly unsettled today as a front will skirt the area. Clearing will begin later with a warming trend. Looking good for Tuesday Wednesday but then a major change. A double barrel storm front will move in late Wednesday bringing unsettled weather well into the weekend. First front early Thursday and a second early Friday will bring us back into winter. 6-12 by Saturday is not out of the question as the jet stream, moisture and energy all combine. Will up the avi hazard for sure for surface activity. Could step down deeper but will depend on moisture amounts. Yesterday we saw very strong winds above timberline moving the snow that fell Saturday. So shallow wind slabs can be expected. So with the weather slowly warmer how do we start to forecast for spring conditions. We know that the lower levels of the snowpack are warming from geologic heat and the upper snow pack is reacting to air temperature. The whole enchilada starts to be tied to the surface layers holding everything together by the amount of freeze the night before. Corn snow can be heavenly to ski as the daily freeze and thaw makes large surface grains. As the day warms the stability starts to decrease as the southern exposures become mush. As this mush gets deeper stability decreases and we have to head for cooler northern aspects. What throws a monkey wrench into everything is if there is not a good refreeze over night due to clouds holding the heat in or warm weather patterns, the refreeze never happens and the snowpack remains wet or just a thin veneer of refreeze occurs. This veneer may not be able to hold the slush from becoming a wet slide that is easy to trigger. So spring skiing can be overall determined by temperature. The harder the refreeze the more stable things are. The warmer the nights are the more likely that wet activity occurs. The problem for this year will be that areas that have not slid so far still have an extremely weak basal layers. If surface wet activity occurs it most likely will dig deeper triggering a much larger event. These wet slabs may be massive and destructive. We are not there yet as the high alpine is still relatively cold but eventually the sun will stay out for a while and timing will become everything in terms of stability.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:53:21 +0000
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