With warm temps and continued rains in the forecast wet loose avalanches remain possible in areas where trees and steep rocky faces are cleaning themselves during this thaw.

With warm temps and continued rains in the forecast wet loose avalanches remain possible in areas where trees and steep rocky faces are cleaning themselves during this thaw.

The National Weather Service Forecasts-

Today- Windy. Rain. Temperatures remaining around 50. Southeast wind to 30 mph with gusts to around 45 mph decreasing to 10 to 20 mph in the afternoon.

Tonight- Rain. Lows around 40. Southeast wind 10 to 20 mph.

Wednesday- Rain. Highs around 43. South wind 10 to 15 mph.

Temperatures are incredibly warm around the region this morning. They climbed close to 9f around the region over the last 24 hours. Its currently 50f at the airport. The warmest temps we have seen this winter... Eaglecrest is 45f at the base, 42f mid mountain and 36f on summit. This came in with another 1\" of precipitation at the Eaglecrest Ski Area and roughly .6\" of rain at the tram summit. Winds remain strong with 30-60mph winds around the region over the last 24 hours.

This warming and heavy rains comes at the end of a large storm with a very active avalanche cycle. Most of our primary avalanche paths and repeat offenders have already run and cleared themselves off.

Any slopes that have not released and cleaned already on steep slopes remain the primary concern. Especially steep unsupported convex slopes or rock faces with few or no anchors.

With both natural and human triggered avalanches still possible avalanche danger is CONSIDERABLE today. I would keep it at high but we are past the vast majority of activity and many slopes have already slid and cleared.

We have lost a great deal of snow over the last 24 hours with Eaglecrest losing 9\" and the tram losing more than 14\". This erosion is eating away at the bonds in the snowpack as well.

As the snowpack develops drainage channels and starts to process the water danger levels will go down. This may have already occurred in the last 24 hours. But until that happens danger remains. Even after the snowpack develops drainage it will remain suspect on steep slopes. These warm temps and incredible erosion rate should not be ignored. Although danger levels are down a little today danger will remain until the temps cool off back to the point of freezing.

Use caution our there over the net 24 hours as we get through the tail end of this avalanche cycle.

Here is a link to an interesting article by Simon Trautman on investigations into wet snow.

http://www.avalanche.org/moonstone/SnowMechanics/Wet%20Snow/WetSnowArticles.TAR26.4.pdf