As snow moved into the high country with a weekend storm, recent dry conditions laid the groundwork for a significantly increased threat of avalanches.
“That’s really the main problem right now is that we’ve had a lot of warm and dry weather and that has made the snow surface very weak,” said Mike Cooperstein, regional manager for the Northern Mountains for the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
“And so when we get big storms on really weak snow surfaces, we start to see avalanche activity, some of which will be natural. A lot of which can be easily human-triggered. And we’ll have problems over the weekend,” he said.
The Avalanche Information Center expected Friday that it would be moving notifications from watches to warnings over the weekend as a storm arrived in Colorado, potentially bringing big snowfall to the mountains.
“Our recommendation for the weekend is really to avoid avalanche terrain, which means slopes deeper than about 30 degrees,” said Cooperstein.
And even less significant slopes, with steep slopes above could be a problem he indicated.
There has been one avalanche death so far this season.
The 2022-23 season was one of Colorado’s worst with eleven avalanche deaths, about four more than a typical season. The Avalanche Information Center says is was aware of 122 people caught in avalanches in the 2022-23 season.
