Avalanche Canada issues special warning for Kamloops region

KAMLOOPS — Avalanche Canada has issued a ‘special public avalanche warning’ for backcountry users in the interior of British Columbia. It says recent storms and subsequent weather conditions has destabilized a weak snowpack.

The special warning includes much of the area to the north and east of Kamloops.

Special warning (image credit – Avalanche Canada)

It warns a prolonged cold and dry start to the winter created a number of persistent weak layers in the snowpack across the interior ranges of B.C.

Avalanche Canada Senior Forecaster Simon Horton stated that the storm cycles that hit western Canada over the past weekend added significant snow on top of an exceptionally weak lower snowpack.

“We’ve been tracking the conditions in the mountains over the winter and we’ve seen up to this point, some concerns of having a shallow snowpack with cold temperatures causing weak snow. And now with these recent storms, a lot of heavy load has been added to it. We see potential for quite tricky avalanche conditions in the next week,” said Horton.

While avalanche danger ratings may start to decrease as the weather improves, there will still be a chance of triggering a large avalanche. Making conservative terrain choices like sticking to lower angle slopes can help manage the risk according to Horton.

“We see some light snowfall coming in at the start of the weekend but we don’t think it’s anything substantial that is going to change the weak snow that is already on the ground. Really this type of snowpack structure is going to take a while to gradually heal. So, patience is what we are going to have to use before heading out into steeper avalanche terrain,” added Horton.