Special Avalanche Advisory Issued In Utah Amid Heat Wave

As a historic March heat wave breaks records across the West, the Utah Avalanche Center has issued a Special Avalanche Advisory warning of soggy snow and wet avalanches.

On Friday morning, March 20, 2206, the organization said that as temperatures climb above yesterday's, “significant meltwater will travel through the snowpack and has the potential to pool on various layers throughout the snowpack.”

That will cause snow layers to quickly destabilize, increasing the likelihood of wet slab avalanches in the backcountry. 

Wet slabs are springtime events in most climates. But right now, “It feels more like early June rather than mid-March,” noted the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office in a social media post. While cold winter storms are often associated with avalanche cycles, spiking temperatures can make snow move, too.

The Utah Avalanche Center advised skiers to give themselves a wide safety margin and to navigate the snowpack uncertainty by “choosing conservative terrain, avoiding travel on and beneath steep slopes, and planning an early exit from the mountains well before the heat of the day.”

In zones around Salt Lake City, the forecasters called for “considerable” avalanche danger, the third-highest level on the North American Public Avalanche Danger Scale. That level indicates that human-triggered avalanches are likely. 

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The announcement comes amid a blast of unusually hot temperatures hitting states from California to Utah. In Phoenix, Arizona, the mercury climbed to 105 degrees on March 19, setting the highest temperature on record for the entire month of March.

“For some perspective, the average first 105° day of the year normally occurs on May 22nd,” the local National Weather Service office wrote in a social media post.

The heat isn’t just baking metro areas and shaking up the backcountry snowpack. After an often snowless season that saw fewer powder days than usual, several western ski resorts have called it quits.

In Utah, Cherry Peak, Eagle Point, and Nordic Valley are already closed. Snowbasin plans to close this weekend on Sunday, March 22. 

“We’ve had maybe one of the more challenging seasons in history,” the resort’s COO and General Manager, Davey Ratchford, said in a social media post.

To view the Utah Avalanche Center’s latest forecasts, click here.