The National Weather Service Forecasts-

REST OF TODAY...VERY WINDY. RAIN. SNOW LEVEL LOWERING TO 1300
FEET IN THE AFTERNOON. HIGHS AROUND 46. SOUTHEAST WIND 25 TO 40 MPH WITH GUSTS 70 MPH...THEN DECREASING TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 45 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.

TONIGHT...RAIN SHOWERS IN THE EVENING THEN SNOW SHOWERS LIKELY LATE. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2 INCHES. LOWS AROUND 30. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 TO 15 MPH.

SATURDAY...COLDER. SNOW SHOWERS IN THE MORNING...THEN ISOLATED SNOW SHOWERS IN THE AFTERNOON. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2 INCHES. HIGHS AROUND 34. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 MPH SHIFTING TO THE NORTHEAST IN THE AFTERNOON.

The Mt Roberts Tram JAWS temperature gauge reached its warmest temperature since Oct. 18, 2011 at 3am last night at 44f degrees.

Although precipitation totals have not reached their forecast amounts we have received about .5\" of precip in the last 24 hours.

Winds have been blowing from 25-65 at the Tram Summit out of the SSE while Eaglecrest winds have been 40+ since midnight and are now in the 60-90mph range.

Driving winds and the warmest temperatures we have seen in quite some time accompanied by todays rains with as much as another .5\" of precip throughout the day will keep avalanche danger at HIGH.

Potentially destructive natural avalanches likely to come near or reach developed areas, natural and human triggered avalanches remain likely.

Temperatures are forecast to continually fall throughout the day and rain and wind rates are forecast to continually decrease.

By this afternoon into this evening we should be back in a freezing cycle and things will start to stabilize once again.

It will take a little time to do so as the snowpack, especially in the lower mountain regions, is quite rain saturated.

We went through a large natural avalanche cycle from Wednesday afternoon into Thursday Afternoon with most all avalanche paths in the urban enviroment sliding.

A few paths remain and will be quite questionable throughout the day today until things start to cool off significantly.

One of those paths is Chop Gulley which comes down across the Flume and Perseverance Trail. This path starts at the highest elevation of any of our urban paths and has more snow than any other place in our region.

Today is a great day to once again limit your travel through avalanche zones.

By tonight into tomorrow we expect to see some additional stabilization and things should start to return to normal.

Thanks for paying close attention to the conditions and HAVE A GREAT DAY.

Wet Snow Avalanche:

Most avalanche professionals make a hard distinction between dry snow and wet snow avalanches because they are such different beasts. They are caused by different processes, they fail and fracture differently, they are triggered differently and they move differently down the slope. Really, there is a continuum between wet and dry avalanches and professional workers use the words: dry, damp, moist, wet and saturated to describe the continuum. Wet avalanches cause relatively few avalanche fatalities, consequently, they are studied less and are not as well understood.

Wet Avalanches

What causes them?

Caused by decreasing the strength of the snowpack

How do they involve people?

Difficult for people to trigger. Most accidents are from natural avalanches

What are the contributing weather factors?

Usually by rain, prolonged melting by sun or very warm temperatures

How do they flow?

Slower (10-40 mph) like concrete and usually without a dust cloud