TODAY...RAIN. HIGHS AROUND 40. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 TO 15 MPH
INCREASING TO 15 TO 20 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.

TONIGHT...NUMEROUS RAIN SHOWERS. SNOW LEVEL 1000 FEET LATE. LOWS AROUND 34. SOUTHEAST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH SHIFTING TO THE SOUTHWEST LATE.

TUESDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY. CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS AND SNOW
SHOWERS. HIGHS AROUND 39. SOUTHWEST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH.

Temperatures came up quite a bit over the last 3 days. Temperatures hit +3C yesterday at the Mt Roberts Tram Summit at mid day. Eaglecrest came right up to the point of freezing.

Temperatures cooled slightly overnight coming to right at freezing at the tram but only to -1 at Eaglecrests summit.

Around 930 last night the winds picked up to 20-30 with higher gusts at Eaglecrest and by this morning were 25-35 with gusts to 40. Along the channel winds were lower staying from 10-20 during most of the event. Direction was out of our traditional SSE.

The Tram saw 5mm of precip and essentailly no new snow. While the UAS site at Eaglecrest is showing about 4cm of new snow at mid mountain and higher.

The forecast for today calls for as much as .6\" of additional precip with temperatures remaining warm. This is eroding the bonds in the snowpack at mid mountain elevations and below. The new snow up high is also coming in with Moderate to Considerable winds and is windloading pockets on the Lee Slopes...

Avalanche danger is MODERATE to Considerable today.

Natural avalanches may be possible at lower elevations where we are receiving mostly rain. Human triggered avalanches are also possible at both upper elevations in windloaded areas and down low with wet snow avalanches.

Slide sizes are not expected to be large should they occur.

Be safe out there and choose good routes. Should you be on a big exposed face and get something rolling it would not be the best place to be.

Enjoy Alaska SEWARDS DAY!

Wet Snow:

There's dry snow and there's wet snow. Or at least that's how most professionals think about the distinction. Although there's really a continuum between dry and wet snow, it's only natural to draw a hard line between them because they are such different beasts altogether. Wet snow that has gone through repeated melt-freeze cycles is often called Corn Snow. Under Corn Snow or Melt-Freeze conditions, a crust forms on the surface that will support your weight when frozen, but turns to deep slush during the heat of the day.

Wet snow avalanches are caused by a completely different process than dry snow avalanches. Although it?s a little overly simplistic, dry avalanches are caused by overloading the strength of buried weak layers while wet avalanches are caused by decreasing the strength of buried weak layers.

To understand the difference between dry snow and wet snow, imagine a bunch of grapes. In this analogy, the grapes are the snow grains and the grape vines are the crystalline bonds between them. Now, imagine that when you wash the grapes, the grape vines dissolve, leaving you with nothing but free-floating grapes. In the snowpack, when water percolates through the snowpack it dissolves the bonds between crystals?the more saturated the snow, the more it dissolves the bonds, thus, dramatically decreasing the strength of the snow.

So, why doesn?t all wet snow instantly avalanche? Part of the reason comes from the bonding power of water itself. In the Lilliputian world of snow crystals, a tiny bead of water usually clings between the grains, which act like a glue because of the \"surface tension\" of water. Surface tension means that water tends to cling to itself, which is why rain comes down as discrete drops instead of falling as a fog. The surface tension of water is actually a fairly powerful glue that holds wet snow together.

But when the snow becomes saturated, all the surface tension between the grains instantly disappears because we?ve flooded the caverns with water?turning a snow cone into a margarita. Not only have the bonds disappeared but millions of tiny ice grains are now buoyant, free to slurp down the mountainside like thousands of concrete trucks dumping their load at once. That?s what makes wet slides especially tricky because snow can loose its strength very quickly. Very stable snow can turn into very unstable snow in a matter of an hour or even minutes.

Corn Snow becomes ?ripe? when the bonds between the snow grains just start to melt, providing a velvety surface texture perfect for many types of riding. This usually occurs in the morning hours, but the exact timing is very aspect dependent. Seasoned corn harvesters know that predicting this timing is an art form honed through experience. If you?re too early, the frozen surface can rattle out your fillings. Worse is arriving too late, after too many bonds have melted and the corn snow has turned into deep, dangerous slush. The slope that may have been perfect an hour ago is now prime for wet snow avalanches.