Current Conditions: Temperatures stayed a bit cooler on Wednesday than I anticipated with highs in the mid 20s at most upper elevation weather stations. This kept the riding conditions excellent and there will be more good conditions today. Sunny slopes did get wet as well as all lower elevation terrain. The wind was generally light from the southwest on Wednesday and is almost calm this morning.
Mountain Weather: We'll have cloudy skies with high temperatures into the low to mid 30s. Wind will be light from the southwest but looks like it could get pretty strong later this afternoon as the next storm system moves in. We should see a few inches of new snow accumulate overnight. We'll see a number of periods of snow through Sunday. Totals are looking better than what I was anticipating yesterday. We should see at least a foot of new snow by late Sunday.
There were a few natural avalanches that occurred during the storm due to wind loading. There were also a number of small snowmobile triggered pockets on Wednesday. All of these were on steep wind loaded slopes just below ridgelines on east facing terrain.
This natural avalanche (photo below) was the largest one that I found. This is large enough to be a serious concern.
The photo below shows what type of pockets were triggered by snowmobilers on Wednesday.
