- Date
- vendredi 6 février 2026
- Étiqueté sous
February 6 Conditions Update
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to your Avalanche Canada conditions report for February 6th, 2026. I'm forecaster Colin Garritty. Normally we like to do a bit of a tour or a survey of all of our forecast regions to give you a bit of a sense of everywhere. But this week we've got a situation developing that warrants a bit more of a focused approach.
Folks who follow our forecasts are probably already aware of the late January weak layer, it formed during the drought in January, and it's taken a few different trajectories across western Canada in the time since it was formed. Today I want to focus in on the B.C. interior, where it's developed into a serious, persistent slab problem. So over the last week or so, we've received many reports of persistent slab avalanches on this layer. And then the depth and the corresponding size of avalanches have varied, but some consistent themes have emerged.
So the layer’s well preserved, it shows up prominently in snow profiles. So if you take a look at the MIN and you see different people's profile walls, and you see a big void in the upper snowpack, that's the layer that we're talking about. It exists at all elevations. So surface hoar grew everywhere, but it was most prominent, that growth, and it was best preserved at kind of mid elevations. That's where we've seen the most reactivity. The recent warming trend hasn't, degraded the layer in any meaningful way. So instead, it's actually aided in the formation of a slab over the layer. It's actually contributing to the problem moreso.
It's also proven quite reactive to remote triggering. So that's triggering from a distance. This tells us that in many areas, it would take very little to, to cause or to trigger a life threatening avalanche. So as we roll into the weekend, we have a storm moving into the interior. It's going to add new snow to the snowpack and new load above the problem. Operators are already impressed by the reactivity of this problem under 20 to 40 cm of recent snow. And they recognize that we haven't yet experienced like a widespread, definitive avalanche cycle on the layer and with the light amounts that we're seeing in the forecast, we don't actually expect that widespread cycle.
Instead, we just see the avalanche danger incrementally step a little bit higher. While that problem hovers near a tipping point. And you don't want to be the one that tips the scales. So with all this in mind, what's our advice? Well, having a dig down to take a look at the problem is a bit double edged. It's a great way to confirm what form the layer takes in your location, but you need to be careful not to dismiss it if you don't find it. Surface hoar formation and preservation is really spatially variable. And just because you don't find it doesn't mean it's not nearby. And your ECT or your ski cut may not give you the feedback that you need to make a safe decision. In general, we've had a fairly forgiving snowpack in the interior so far this season, but, with this problem in play, it's time to step back and exercise the restraint that's more in line with a typical interior snowpack with surface hoar problems. This means, in general, choosing lower angled slopes and also choosing terrain defensively. So choosing places to go where an avalanche won't reach you if it releases, and then measuring your group's exposure to terrain very carefully, if you do find yourself moving through a bit of suspect terrain. It will be important too to tune in to changes in the environment that are contributing to the changes in avalanche likelihood.
So if the wind is picking up, you know a natural wind slab release would be an excellent trigger for a persistent slab avalanche. Is the new snow that we're getting starting to form a more widespread storm slab? The same thing goes there. A storm slab release would be a great trigger for a persistent slab, and for Sunday is the sun starting to poke out? So solar warming and loose wet avalanches again are great natural triggers for deeper layers to avalanche.
So that's the general story for right now. And we're kind of taking the turn off of Easy Street, and the road ahead does look a bit bumpy. So keep both hands on the wheel and, your eyes on the road, and we'll see you next week for another update.