Although we just saw rain in the valleys the Skyline received several inches of snow. Castle Country Radio was able to speak over the telephone with the Utah Avalanche Center’s Brett Kobernik about the latest conditions taking place out in the backcountry.
“The north end of the Skyline did pretty well. It was kind of an interesting storm because it started out super warm, you know, like Tuesday was very warm, rain, snow lineup up pretty high, maybe might have reached 8,000 feet. But above that, its was snow and we received up with about 10 to maybe 12 inches of snow on the north end of the Skyline there,” stated Kobernik. This ended up being a pretty good storm, even though we experienced warmer temperatures.
The conditions we are seeing now with the snowpack is its becoming more stable as these storms are coming through. “So generally, what we are dealing with here we see the avalanche danger increase during and directly after the storms and then the avalanche danger decreases pretty rapidly after things settle down. It doesn’t take a whole lot time, often for that snow to stabilize,” said Kobernik. Once you give conditions a day or two to stabilize after the storm, then conditions are ideal for recreating in the backcountry.
It looks like the weekend forecast is looking to bring warmer temperatures to the area, Kobernik explains what this means for the mountains, “Often times we can see a spike in the avalanche danger due to real rapid warm-ups, I don’t think that’s going to be the case this weekend, there’s a number of different variables that’s kind of telling me that. I think we’re going to see a gradual enough warm-up that is not going to really shock that new snow too much to really spike the avalanche danger.”
The best way to be prepared and safe in the backcountry is to visit the Utah Avalanche Center’s website at https://utahavalanchecenter.org/ to get the latest conditions. “That’s right and search for the Skyline. The forecast contains all kinds of information as far as weather, and snowpack information, any avalanches that we hear about we document those. So often times there will be photos or videos associated with that forecast. It’s a great resource for folks that are heading out in the backcountry,” said Kobernik.