Red Coon Glade

CBAC February 24, 20152014-15 Observations, Avi Blog

NAME: Evan Ross

DATE: 2/23/15

LOCATION: Red Coon Glade

ELEVATION: 9,000-11,700ft

ASPECT: SE

WEATHER: Overcast sky was breaking up in the afternoon. A frew s-1 snow showers through out the day. Strong solar through thin clouds was creating a green housing effect. Calm wind throughout the day.SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Green housing and some solar warmed the snow surface and created a 1-2cm crust by the afternoon. Had pits along the way found generally good bonding between the new/old snow interface as well as the new snow lacking a cohesive slab. HST at 11,000ft was 40-45cm. BTL south facing slopes grater then 30 degrees and below 10,000ft where bare of snow before this storm.

Ski cuts on a small shaded slope BTL that was about 35 degrees produced small storm slab avalanches on the old snow surface about 15 feet wide.

Observed several loose snow avalanches on a steep easterly slope near treeline that looked to set down into the facets below. These D1.5 sloughs may have failed naturally or where skier triggered from the ridge above.

Absurduary: A look at our warm and dry start to 2015.

CB Avalanche Center February 13, 2015Avi Blog, Avi-Off-Season

CBAC Forecaster Zach Guy.

February 12, 2015

In the past few weeks, I’ve seen streams emerge from high elevation basins, sunny slopes melt back to complete dirt, and a migration of locals towards the desert for mountain biking or sun bathing. I’ve only lived in Crested Butte for four years, but this pattern seems so absurd for a high Rockies mountain town at 9,000 feet in elevation, that I dug into some historical weather to see how unusual this weather has been.

Since the New Year, we’ve been plagued by both snowfall drought and unseasonably warm temperatures. The temperatures have been the greatest anomaly this winter. billy barr in nearby Gothic has an exceptional record of temperatures and snowfall dating back to 1974 (www.gothicwx.org). As of Friday, February 12th, 17 out of our 43 days this year have seen record-breaking high temperatures. There have only been two days in February that didn’t break a temperature record, and we are currently going on 8 days in a row of record high temps. I expect the next two days will break records too. On February 6th, the temperature hit 52 degrees F, which was a full month earlier than we’ve ever seen temps reach into the 50’s. I think my brother in Florida is having a colder winter right now.

Looking towards Red Lady Bowl and some dirt slopes down lower. Last year on this date, I dug a pit on a similar slope as that dirt slope in the foreground and found a 2 meter deep snowpack.

Snowfall droughts this time of year aren’t quite as unusual as the temperatures we’ve seen. I looked at both Gothic snowfall and records from the town of Crested Butte, which date back to 1962. (http://www.crestedbutte-co.gov) In Crested Butte, where the average snowfall in January is 41.6”, we got 10.6” of snow last month. There have only been four other January’s that saw less snowfall in the past 52 years. February is off to a rough start as well, with only a few inches. If it makes you feel any better, the winter of ’76-’77 only saw a total of 3” of snow from December through February in Crested Butte. Too bad they didn’t have fat bikes back then. Gothic has fared marginally better on snowfall. They saw 27” in January, which is 41% of average and the 8th lowest January on record. Gothic picked up 6” in February, which is on pace to come up at 21% of the 70” average for February. Thanks to a healthy November and December, Schofield Pass SNOTEL is sitting at 67% of mean (3rd lowest snowpack in its 30 year record), and the Mt. Crested Butte SNOTEL is at 80% of its mean.

As someone who loves the winter, I can’t help but feel gloomy over the past couple months. However, models keep hinting at a pattern change coming later this month or in March, for the warm and dry high pressure ridge to shift west and put us back into the storm track. We’ll see… And also worth noting, the horrible snow year of ’76 to ’77, which was the lowest on record at 61” in Crested Butte, was followed the next winter by the highest snowfall on record, at 381”. I’ll stick around next winter to see what happens!

Looking towards Mt. Crested Butte. Looks more like late April than early February.

Gothic Temps

CBAC February 8, 20152014-15 Observations, Avi Blog

Date: 2.7.15
Name: billy bar
Location: Gothic

Up until yesterday the earliest date in which the temperature in Gothic climbed above 10ºC (50ºF) was March 06. Yesterday it reached 52ºF- beating that old date by full month.

Snodgrass TH

CBAC February 1, 20152014-15 Observations, Avi Blog

NAME: Evan Ross
DATE: 1/31/15
LOCATION: Snodgrass TH

ASPECT: NE
ELEVATION: 9,650

WEATHER: Mostly cloudy sky in the afternoon. Snowing S-1 with warm temps that made it feel like it was almost raining at times. Calm winds started to increase from the west after 4pm.

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Snowpack was upside down with the new snow being cohesive, heavy and moist sitting on weak facets below. A pit at the above aspect and elevation. HS 86cm, all fist hard. HST was 10cm deep and cohesive. Jan 11th Surface Hoar was down 25cm. Shovel tilt and CT test produced moderate results on the Jan 11th interface. ECTX as the snow structure was soft and weak.

External Human Factors in the Backcountry

CBAC January 30, 2015Avi Blog

By Ian Havlick, Crested Butte Avalanche Center

You are standing on top of that virgin line, with that cold, crisp air blowing across your face, the squeak of the snow underfoot, the sun casting long, buttery shadows across your prospective line. The avalanche danger is rated considerable. You have that little high definition camcorder stuck to your helmet, and your two other buddies are peering over the steep line you all have worked all day to get up. Sound familiar?

Humans are inherently curious, emotional, and social creatures. We can study the snow with a microscope, wax poetic about theories on growth of snow crystals, fracture mechanics, blah blah blah. Snow and avalanches in a physical sense is solvable through cold labs, electron microscopes, slow motion cameras, and when all else fails…smart Swiss scientists. But, the human side of things…the emotion, lack of rationale, rushed decisions, and group heuristics is anything but clean cut. Ian McCammon P.hD., a very telented scientist and avalanche practioner, boiled down the bare bones of subconscious human decision making in the backcountry to six categories; Familiarity, Authority, Social proof, Commitment/consistency, Liking/conformity, and scarcity. This research was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, not long ago in most people’s memories, but in the technological world, a decade is an eternity. Just thinking in Apple terms, the iPod was released in 2001. The iPhone released in 2007. These devices and many others we introduced a few years after these heuristic papers were presented and since then have skyrocketed in popularity, both in the front country, and the backcountry.

Now enter the GoPro. The seemingly generic name for all things photo, audio, and video capturing. You got the GoPro, the Contour, the Action Cam, the Air Pro, Parrot, the Hero, the JVC Flash Memory Recorder, the Phantom 2, the VIRB, the PivotHead, on and on they go. How do these little widgets effect our decision making in the backcountry?

Graphic from a recent SIA study, presented at ISSW 2014 in Banff, AB.

This influx of technology has undoubtedly changed the way we operate in avalanche terrain. Social media outlets such as Instagram is just kerosene on the already raging bonfire, especially among the 16-35 year old age bracket, statistically the age range which comprises a vast majority of avalanche fatalities across the globe. 65% of fatalities from 1951 to 2013 to be exact. Avalanche terrain + abundant powder + youth + bragging + proof of taking chances for said bragging = more close calls and ultimately, fatalities. Very little concrete GoPro-specific research has been done to date, but, if point of view (POV) videos of avalanche involvements are any gauge, the statistics may be staggering. Worth keeping in mind next time your standing on top of the primo slope asking your buddy if that little red light is blinking…

Insights, Musings, and Additional Resources for our Avalanche World!

CB Avalanche Center January 13, 2015Avi Blog

Check out the CBAC Forecasters Blog…

What are facets?

CB Avalanche Center December 28, 2014Avi Blog, Avi-Off-Season

By Zach Guy

CBAC Forecaster

If you’ve been reading our avalanche advisories lately, you’ve probably noticed we’ve been talking a lot about facets. Last weekend, major winter storm slammed into our mountains, and we saw widespread avalanche activity, with facets being one of the major culprits. So what is the deal with this snow grain type, how does it form, and why is it so problematic?

Facets are a sugary-like snow grain. They glisten in the sun, bounce in your glove, and commonly make a noticeably soft or hollow layer in the snowpack. If you look at them under a magnifying glass, they have many flat edges, hence the name facets.

Courtesy Photo

There are several different ways that can cause snow grains to facet, but they all share the same underlying physical process. Facetsform when water vapor moves quickly through the snowpack. Each particle gets handed off between grains, via sublimation and deposition, causing the grains to reconfigure into a more angular form. Strong temperature differences within the snowpack cause this water vapor relay. We can see facets form early season when the ground is quite warm, there is a shallow snowpack, and the air gets cold, especially at night. This drives the water vapor upward through the snowpack causing it to facet, or rot out. We also see a similar process occurring on top of the snowpack, called “near surface faceting.” When we get warm days and cold, clear nights, the snow surface undergoes wild temperature swings, causing the same rapid water vapor movement. This process is expedited if the surface is composed of soft, low density snow, rather than stiff, hard, compacted snow. All of these ingredients have come together this winter. We have seen basal facets form during the early season when our snowpack was shallow. Then, on December 1st, we got about 4″ of new, low density snow, which was followed by two weeks of warm days and cold, clear nights. That surface snow metamorphosed into fragile, sugary grains, and we didn’t get strong winds that can sometimes destroy that layer as it is forming. On December 13th, that near surface facet layer was buried, and it is now under the weight of all the new snow that has fallen in the past 2 weeks.

Facets form a type of layer in the snow coined as a “persistent weak layer.” So once a layer of facets gets buried by a slab of new or windblown snow, it makes for a weakness in the snowpack on which avalanches can fail. Worst of all, the weakness is long-lasting, so we can see avalanches fail on facet layers weeks or months after they are buried. This means that we can see very large slabs of snow develop over the course of the winter before a facet layer might finally give out, causing a huge avalanche. Facets have a few other nasty tricks up their sleeves. If the layer is fairly continuous, it is so fragile that it can drive a failure very long distances across avalanche terrain. I’ve seen avalanches fail almost a mile wide on facet layers!! If you can get the layer to collapse on flat terrain, it can propagate up a slope and cause an avalanche to release above you. So not only do these layers plague us for long periods of time, but they also behave in an unusual manner. Keep this in mind in upcoming weeks and months, now that we have several facet layers buried in our snowpack. For more information or to get daily avalanche advisories, visit www.cbavalanchecenter.org.

This is a photo of a shallow slab that propagated impressive distances on the December 13th facet layer, near Purple Palace. Photo credit: Aaron Huckstep

Ian’s Weather Resources

CB Avalanche Center December 28, 2014Avi Blog, Avi-Off-Season

Current Data

Surface:

    http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/
    https://avalanche.state.co.us/obs_stns/stns.php
    http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/mesomap.cgi?state=CO&rawsflag=3
    Schofield SNOTEL: http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/nwcc/site?sitenum=737

Upper-air soundings:

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/upper/

Radar & Satellite:

http://www.weathertap.com ($84/yr, great mobile website as well)

Discussions

    NWS: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/view/prodsByState.php?state=CO&prodtype=discussion
    OpenSnow: http://opensnow.com/dailysnow/colorado
    CAIC: http://avalanche.state.co.us/forecasts/weather/zone-forecast/
    http://wasatchweatherweenies.blogspot.com

Forecast Models: Twisterdata.com

Top Center

NAM = 84hr 12km resolution

GFS = 384hr 27km resolution

RAP = 18hr 13km resolution

Left Side

700mb = orographic wind direction

500mb = vorticity

300mb = jet stream

Upper Right

Clickable map = one forecast image

Animated loop = all forecast images

Compare models = toggle between each model

dProg/dt = see the trend in the forecasts
Forecast Models: CAIC

    High-resolution version of the NAM model
    Graphics: http://avalanche.state.co.us/forecasts/weather/model-forecasts/
    Points: http://avalanche.state.co.us/forecasts/weather/point-forecasts/

Forecast Models: Weatherbell.com

Access to European model graphics and many other models. Fantastic data. $185/year

New Website: Avalanche Problems

CB Avalanche Center November 27, 2014Avi Blog, Avi-Off-Season

Zach Guy
Forecaster, CBAC

By now, you’ve probably noticed the CBAC has had a bit of a make-over. We have spent over a year designing, researching, redesigning, and coding our new website, which we launched this week. We were operating on an old dinosaur of a web platform and it was time for a new site that matched the current state of the e-world. This new site has improved graphics, higher resolution imagery, more user friendly from our end and yours, an improved observations platform, a format that is more consistent with avalanche centers nation-wide, and some additional forecasting tools which you can use to make safer decisions in the backcountry. Bear with us as we work through the kinks and strive to improve the functionality of the site.

Now let’s jump into a key element of our daily forecasts: the avalanche problem. The reason we put a lot of focus on avalanche problems is because the flavor of the avalanches we expect to encounter can be more influential in our terrain and risk management than a given danger rating. For example, not all Moderat danger ratings are created equal. I move through terrain and make snowpack assessments very differently for a Moderate danger when the only concern is wind slabs, versus a moderate danger involving deep persistent slabs. The Utah Avalanche Center just published a new tutorial on avalanche problems; its worth a look. http://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanche-problems-tutorial. The CAIC also defines each problem here

This idea of avalanche problems is nothing new to our CBAC users, but we’re presenting it in a slightly different way. The four key elements to the avalanche problem is the avalanche character, its distribution, its likelihood, and its size. Here’s an example of how we present the problem. You can always click on the little blue “information” icons for more help or info.

The trickiest part of this is the distribution rose: where the problem is located across our terrain. Imagine a conical shaped peak, and you are hovering above it in your private helicopter. The inner-most rung is the highest elevation: above treeline, and the outer-most rung is the base of the cone below treeline. Each triangular octet represents a compass direction, so imagine this conical peak is oriented the same way it would look on a map. Now here’s the important part. We shade the areas where the problem is most likely. The problem distribution is never as black and white as it appears on this rose. This gives you general guidance on where you are most likely to encounter the problem at the regional level, but it is still up to you to make assessments on individual slopes. Here’s an example: We get a mild snow event with strong westerly winds. Our advisory will probably shade the distribution of fresh wind slabs on leeward aspects (NE, E, SE) near and above treeline because windslabs will be fairly widespread on those slopes. Given such an event, I can almost always find wind slabs on windward aspects (due West) too, if I seek out cross-loaded features or gullies. There might be a few slopes below treeline that develop wind slabs as well. So just because the wind slabs are prevalent on higher elevation, leeward aspects, it doesn’t mean you shut off your snow senses if you’re traveling elsewhere. We will try to describe these nuances and subtleties in our text, so its in your best interest to read the whole advisory and not just look at the pretty pictures.

The likelihood is fairly self explanatory. This is the chance of triggering a slide if you are recreating in steep, avalanche terrain in the parts of the rose that we have shaded, where the problem is most prevalent. Lastly, we describe the expected size. Small avalanches are D1’s: relatively harmless to people unless they push you into a terrain trap. Large avalanches are D2’s: they could bury, injure or kill a person. Very large avalanches are D3’s: these could bury cars, destroy a house, or break trees. Historic avalanches are nearing the maximum size a slope can produce. These don’t happen every year.

We’d like to acknowledge Brandon Clifford, our website designer, and the CAIC for contributing resources and forecasting elements. We hope you find our new website useful in planning and making safe decisions in the backcountry.

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