Northern San Juan

Avalanche

Ann Mellick · Dec 10, 2021 · Northern San Juan

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Weather

The back side of our big storm brought squalls throughout the day, with short bursts of intense snowfall followed by partial clearing-->repeat. Temps dropped through the day as the cold front seeped into the region.

Snowpack

The entire snowpack on most slopes is comprised of snow that fell this week, most of which fell in a 15 hour period late yesterday into this morning. The exception to this can be found on the north facing slopes near the Ophir turn.

Avalanche

An small avalanche cycle ran its course around 8:30 AM this morning at the very tail end of a prolonged period of very high precipitation intensity. A dozen or so R1 D1 slides ran on southeasterly facing slopes along the corridor. Debris just came to the edge of the road and did not affect the highway. Crowns were ~6" deep and ran on some sort of storm snow interface. Two bigger slides ran as well: Yellow Springs Gully, where debris crossed both lanes (3'x30') and White Lizard which came just over the white line.