January 10, 2015

   First light Friday January 9, 2015. Became overcast very quickly.

    It did lighten up a little yesterday.

    There was even some blue sky for a while yesterday afternoon.

    Sky got darker again at sunset.




Weather Observations for January 10, 2015; taken at 06:00 Hours.

2240 meters        -4, Winds were 5-10 KPH from the S
2180 meters        -2, Winds were 5-10 KPH from the SSE
1860 meters        -2, Winds were 5-10 KPH from the SSE
1835 meters        -1, Winds were 0-5 KPH from the E
1650 meters         0, 3 cm of new new snow, Base 124 cm
1550 meters         0, 2 cm  of new new snow, Base 96 cm,  Relative Humidity 99%.

  660 meters         0, Valley Temp, Max Temp Yest +0.9, 0.4 mm of precip recorded yesterday

   As of 07:00 Hours we have obscured skies and limited visibility.  Broken layers of stratus cloud.



For the forecast, a weak flat upper level ridge will bring unsettled conditions for today into tomorrow morning. A weak disturbance passed by last night with some very light precipitation. The inversion has finally disappeared with temperatures more indicative of a weak El Nino year. A low pressure system is still allowing some cloud into the area as it slips South. We may see some isolated precipitation from that low as it slides by. Dry weather with the building surface high will bring mostly sunny skies to the area Monday through Wednesday. It appears that a weather system may bring snow to the area later next week. More on that as we get closer.

   Yesterday satellite image at around noon January 9, 2015..

    The big picture shows lots of moisture but the high is dominating our zone.

    Fairly dry looking for today.

    Surface high builds back in for Monday through Wednesday.

    Southwesterly flow will hopefully bring a change on Thursday.





ARTICLES:

1 Person dead, 4 trapped in an avalanche in Turkey: Caykara, Turkey

Avalanche Education: Snowboard Mountaineer.com

Regional Patterns of soot, dirt on North America snow Discovered: Science Daily

Snowmobiler stranded in freezing ravine wrote goodbye notes: Montana

How US Olympic skiing hopefuls died in Austrian Mountains: Breaking News

   Will be interesting to see how the Photographers deal with these conditions in the Photo Contest.

    Still skiing to the valley!!



Hi Wango,

I hope your recovery is going well! I thought I'd send you some photos from the Place Glacier area January 8, 2015. We were in alpine terrain from 1850m to 2700m. There was a small avalanche cycle on many aspects to sz 1.5 as you can see in the photos. Crowns averaged approx 15cm. We also saw evidence of loose avalanches on steep solar aspects sz 1. There was a 5cm supportive crust and rain runnels on the surface, and the HST had settled to 40cm interlaid with 4 or 5 zipper crusts. Test results yielded varied hard results from broken to sudden collapse down approx 30cm on a density change. HS on the glacier was 200-300cm. Winds were calm to light from the north and the high was 5 deg at 2700m. Time for ski crampons and peak ascents!

Cheers
Jeff

                                                                                                                                 Jeff Van Driel Photo

                                                                                                                                Jeff Van Driel Photo

                                                                                                                        Jeff Van Driel Photo

                                                                                                                                                                 Jeff Van Driel Photo