Avalanche Forecast
Sea To Sky
These ratings reflect conditions that are expected to develop Thursday afternoon as new snow and wind create fresh storm slabs at upper elevations. Closely monitor how the new snow is bonding to the old surface as you travel throughout your day.
Avalanche Problem 1: Storm Slabs
What Elevation?
Which Slopes?
Chances of Avalanches?
Expected Size?
Travel and Terrain Advice
- Watch for fresh storm slabs building throughout the day.
- Be cautious in lee features above treeline, old wind slabs rest on a buried crust.
- Be alert to conditions that change with elevation and time of day.
Avalanche Summary
On Wednesday the upper snowpack was largely unaffected by control work, but it did produce a few size 1.0 avalanches on unknown aspects. On Tuesday control work produced storm slab avalanches to size 1.5 on a wide variety of aspects. On Monday control work produced avalanches to size 2 with crowns averaging 20 cm in depth.
Snowpack Summary
10 to 15 cm of light density snow from Monday night and Tuesday now rests on 20 to 30 cm of slightly heavier snow that fell over the weekend. This snow was redistributed by moderate to strong southeast through southwest winds on Sunday. All of this snow is above the the January 6th crust which is present to at least 2100 m, maybe higher. This crust is reportedly breakable below 2100 m. Below the crust there is about 20 cm of settled moist snow.
Up to 100 cm below the surface there is a widespread melt-freeze crust that was buried on December 15th, but this layer has not produced any recent avalanche activity and is trending towards dormancy.
Beneath the mid-December crust, the lower snowpack is generally strong and well settled.
Weather Forecast
A significant weather system is expected to impact the Coast Wednesday night through Thursday night delivering snow and significant amounts of southwest wind. A ridge of high pressure will start to build over the Pacific again starting Friday. On Saturday and Sunday a rather stagnant airmass should allow warming to spill into the region.
THURSDAY: Overcast, freezing level at valley bottom, light to moderate south/southwest wind, 5 to 15 cm of snow possible.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Overcast, freezing level at valley bottom, light to moderate south/southwest wind, 5 to 10 cm of snow possible.
FRIDAY: Scattered cloud, freezing level around 600 m, light variable wind, trace of snow possible.
SATURDAY: Overcast, freezing level beginning near 600 m, rising to 2000 m throughout the day, light southwest wind, no precipitation expected.
Avalanche Forecasts in your Inbox
Avalanche Canada has switched to an RSS feed for its daily forecasts. This is a much more flexible method that allows automatic delivery to your email inbox, or to an RSS reader of your choice.
What are RSS feeds?
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Set up an RSS feed for your email:
Select a RSS aggregator
- Sea To Sky URL:
http://www.avalanche.ca/api/forecasts/sea-to-sky.rss - Copy the url and paste it into the appropriate field of your RSS aggregator.
- Fill in your email address.
- Voila! Watch the Avalanche Canada forecast roll into your inbox.
Forecast Disclaimer
Avalanche Canada's Public Avalanche Bulletin, and other information and services provided by Avalanche Canada, are intended for personal and recreational purposes only.
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5 to 15 cm of snow accompanied by southerly wind is expected to form storm slabs throughout the day. These fresh storm slabs may begin to hide stubborn old wind slabs that may still be sensitive to human triggering in more extreme terrain.