From the National Weather Service:

TODAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY BECOMING SUNNY IN THE MORNING. HIGHS AROUND 43. EAST WIND 5 TO 10 MPH. NEAR DOWNTOWN JUNEAU AND DOUGLAS...NORTHEAST WIND 10 TO 20 MPH.

TONIGHT...MOSTLY CLEAR. LOWS 17 TO 27...COLDEST IN WIND SHELTERED AREAS. NORTHEAST WIND 5 TO 10 MPH. NEAR DOWNTOWN JUNEAU AND DOUGLAS...NORTHEAST WIND 15 TO 25 MPH.

SATURDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY IN THE MORNING THEN BECOMING SUNNY. HIGHS AROUND 37. NORTHEAST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH. NEAR DOWNTOWN JUNEAU AND DOUGLAS...NORTHEAST WIND 15 TO 25 MPH.

The forecast calls for warming daytime weather, with cooling at night and partly cloudy mornings clearing though the day. Winds are expected to build to moderate speeds out of the northeast.

Over the last 24 hours Mt. Roberts weather plot saw winds increasing to 20kts out of the northeast. Temperatures warmed through the day, peaking around 1pm at 33f before cooling through the night to 27f. There has been no new precipitation.

Yesterday we saw numerous small point releases, and at one small wet slide was observed mid-day running down Chop Gulley. The sunny aspects saw significant, rapid warming. Similar activity or greater is expected today with mainland alpine temperatures forecast to reach 33, another day of sun, and the snow adjusts to this daily freeze/thaw cycle.

There were numerous small to medium sized windslabs noted releasing on westerly aspects from artificial triggers on Douglas yesterday at medium elevations. In at least one case a skier triggered slough in turn triggered a larger wind slab. The depth hoar layer still exists, and was reported to be at 1.2m down yesterday on Douglas. A smaller slide may trigger a larger, deeper event where this layer exists.

Todays urban zone hazard is at CONSIDERABLE: small avalanches in many areas; or large avalanches in specific areas; or very large avalanches in isolated areas. Higher temperatures and sunshine will warm the snow more than yesterday, numerous point releases and wet slides are expected.

The persistent weak layer is still alive and maturing. Recent fieldwork showed it is increasing in weakness and is becoming more difficult to trigger artificially. It is about 1m deep in the snow now. The sporadic, unpredictable distribution and increasing snow load has raised the consequences and decreased our ability to detect it easily. Avoid thin spots that may trigger a much larger slide. It is possible that a small release may also trigger a deeper slide. Use safe travel techniques, gather information along the way, choose your lines conservatively and with intention.

This is a good day to avoid the Flume and Perseverance trails despite the sunny weather.

The Human Factor, Pt. 2:

This is the second half of an excerpt taken from a great avalanche article series hosted by the MEC website. This one is written by Ian McCammon, who has studied the human role in avalanches extensively. For the full article, cut and paste the link at the bottom. Here it is:

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT HUMAN FACTORS?
Human factors are part of being human. They are essential to efficiently navigating the complexities of everyday life. Try as we might, we can't simply talk ourselves out of relying on them, but we may be able to recognize when we are most prone to their negative influences and stop a bad decision in its tracks.

1. TRAVEL WITH PARTNERS YOU CAN TALK TO
In a common accident scenario, a party gets spread out in avalanche terrain, with no specific plan to re-group and re-assess conditions. The person out front makes their own route finding decisions and the group follows, often with increasing alarm about what they see around them. When the avalanche releases, the victims are often well aware of the risks they were taking.

To avoid this situation, travel in parties that communicate about avalanche conditions. You don't need a running commentary, just a friendly discussion at key points in the tour about what folks are seeing and experiencing. It helps to agree beforehand on where the key decision points are, and have a common language for discussing avalanche conditions and risk tolerance.

2. IDENTIFY WHEN THE RISK LEVEL IS RISING
To catch an accident before it happens, try a pre mortem test: Ask yourself, if an accident occurs, what would I have missed? Imagine your buddies sitting in the bar after your accident, wondering how you made your decision to ski or highmark that slope. If you can enumerate more than two or three obvious signs of avalanche danger, you are probably taking significant risks. And your feeling that \"everything will work out OK\" will, in hindsight after an accident, look to them more like recklessness or worse.

Good communication within your party is essential to recognizing changing avalanche conditions. Need help figuring out how much risk you are actually taking? Werner Munter's Reduction Method, the SnowCard, NivoTest or ALP TRUTh method can provide some quantitative insights. Even better tools are on the way, in the form of a backcountry decision framework for recreationists, developed by the Canadian Avalanche Centre.

3. ASSESS HOW OBJECTIVE YOU ARE ABOUT THE RISK
We've seen that in the face of certain psychological cues, it's difficult to be objective about avalanche hazard. Even experience and training are no guarantee. A simple way to find out what you're up against is to perform a FACETS test.

FACETS is an acronym listing the human factors previously described, and it can help you remember the psychological cues that can obscure your perception of avalanche conditions. In the FACETS test, you simply run through the list and see which cues are present. Depending on your experience, group size, and other factors, each cue may have a different level of influence on your objectivity. But in general, the more cues that are present, the more difficult it will be for you to objectively assess the danger. Like an unstable snowpack, it doesn't matter what the depth of your avalanche knowledge and experience is if your decisions rest on weak assumptions.

It's important to recognize that tools like the pre mortem and FACETS tests are in a very early stage of evolution, and they do not cover all possible combinations of avalanche hazard and human factors. They may not be perfect, but they can get you started down the road of recognizing trouble before it strikes. And they will make it less likely that someday, a bar room debate about your group will make people wonder, \"What were they thinking?\"

Read the whole article here: http://www.mec.ca/AST/ContentPrimary/Learn/Snowsports/AvalancheSafety/HumanFactors.jsp

Other good Human Factor reads:

Further Human Factor Explanation Statistical Breakdown: http://www.summitpost.org/human-factors-in-avalanche-incidents/188636

Ian McCammon's Original Article (PDF): http://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/objects/issw-2009-0644-0648.pdf