Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday, December 27, 2019 through Thursday, January 2, 2020: Summary: Cold and cloudy with light snowfall early in the period. The snow surface consists of loose, weak new snow that sluffs easily on steeper aspects. The persistent weak layer that is found at mid and upper elevation aspects facing northwest through east appears to be dormant …

In this podcast, we sit down with retired economist Peter Donner and retired meteorologist Larry Dunn to talk about forecasting in the economic terms of gain and loss, risk and reward. What's the goal of forecasting - accuracy or outcome? How do you impact decision making--not to mention your reputation--with forecasts that are overly cautious or not cautious enough? This conversation was inspired by last winter's Low Danger series and Peter's subsequent essay, "Bias, Variance, and Loss in Avalanche Forecasting," included below. Bias, Variance and Loss in …

Our Week in Review highlights significant snowfall, weather, and avalanche events of the previous week. (Click here to review the archived forecasts for the Salt Lake mountains.) The danger roses for the Salt Lake mountains from Friday, December 20 through Thursday, December 26, 2019: Summary: Warming temperatures and sustained winds out of the south through early in the week. Snowfall begins late Monday afternoon, persisting through Wednesday. Storm totals are: 15" in the Cottonwoods (highest amounts of mid Big Cottonwood canyon) 10" along Park City …

One of the greatest satisfactions of my career is having conversations with others about this world. With permission, I am reprinting a recent piece of correspondence from an Army officer who is frequently deployed to the middle east. I spent time in the middle east as a naval intelligence officer in Desert Storm in the early 90s. Drew, I hope all is well. It’s Derek, the skier/soldier, we chatted a little last year. Of course my luck, I deployed in March and missed the amazing finish to last season, but so is military life. I’m back and already getting …

In this podcast, we sit down with Doug Workman. Doug is an alpine guide but is considered the real deal as far as international ski guiding goes. Doug is one of the more thoughtful and insightful people in the mountains that you'll meet and his philosophy on guiding may not be what you think. Doug Workman has been taking risks on the snow since he was a toddler learning to ski at Powder Ridge in Connecticut. Since then he has found many other places to experiment with risk taking and risk management—Alaska, Pakistan, Iceland, China, Morocco, Svalbard, Antarctica, and in …

Brief history: Snow fell in October and became faceted. In early to mid-November, warm weather formed a crust on top of this layer which remained on north and east-facing slopes. Warm weather melted snow off of south and west-facing aspects. A little more snow fell on top of the crust around Nov 20th, and this snow faceted. All these facets formed the persistent weak layer that is now at the bottom of the snowpack. When heavy snowfall arrived during the week of Thanksgiving, many avalanches fractured on this persistent weak layer. Some avalanche failed on facets above the crust. Some …