Our area in the valleys didn’t see much snow but there were some significant storms that produced some snow in the higher country. Castle Country Radio spoke over the telephone with Utah Avalanche Center’s Brett Kobernik to get all the details as of Apr. 6.
It’s been an amazing winter thus far and it looks as though temperatures will warm up a bit this weekend. “Another significant storm for the high country, two feet of snow up along the Skyline from that storm Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and strong winds associated with that. That’s what closed SR-31 was the drifting across the top. The banks of the road are so deep, it doesn’t take much just to fill the channel that is the road in between those banks,” stated Kobernik. Officials are hoping that sometime on Thursday SR-31 will reopen so folks are urged to travel with caution through the area.
Although there were several storms that passed through, the east side of Skyline didn’t see too much. “It was a little bit different than the previous storms. Once you get over to Electric Lake even, and the top of Huntington Canyon was only about six inches of snow so it was a little bit different of a storm than what we had. Now it was windy like I said, and that always creates some avalanche concerns. The wind transports snow from one side of the mountain and deposits it on the other side. Where it deposits that snow, it forms these large drifts, and those are often sensitive during when they’re forming and directly afterward,” said Kobernik. He didn’t see much natural avalanches coming from these storms and from his fieldwork things don’t feel all that sensitive in the high country.
“Looking forward to the weekend, what we’re looking at is the warming temperatures, that has us somewhat concerned, it can make this new snow become unstable. Now that hope is that we’re going to have a gradual enough warming trend through the weekend and cold temperatures at night. So we get some warmth, it freezes back up, we get a little bit more warmth, it freezes back up. This is a good pattern for stability in the mountains,” explained Kobernik. Folks should look out for roller balls/pinwheels in the high country because these are indicators that things are getting sloppy, mushy and unstable.
The most important thing for folks that are interested in getting out this weekend is to check that daily avalanche forecast at https://utahavalanchecenter.org/ this will give them the most recent information. On the website individuals will be able to see the danger rating of avalanches, the amount of snow that has been received and can expect, the current and estimated temperatures in the backcountry.