Do your own localized assessments and be suspect of terrain features that encourage drifting, such as the leeward sides of ridgelines, alpine couloirs, gully features, and cross-loaded depressions. It is critical to remember that the distribution of wind slabs overlaps with our persistent slab problem. This means that even a relatively small avalanche breaking in the upper snowpack has the potential to step down into older snow, creating a much larger and more destructive avalanche.
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A quick-moving and warm Pacific storm will bring increasing winds and periods of mountain snowfall to the region starting this afternoon. Showers are expected to continue into the morning tomorrow. More mild weather is expected to return for the latter half of the work week before a more potent storm system moves into the region this weekend.
Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center » Avalanche Forecasts (esavalanche.org)
Lots of hype for this last storm in NorCal, and all we got was a night of nice steady rain. All of our creeks are normal right now. Twitter weather forecasters are out of control - this is about the fifth straight storm they’ve hyped that has failed to live up to expectations in the Sac Valley.
I agree. California always looking for an emergency.
Better to be a day too early than 10 minutes too late. We’ve made a career and a good living dealing with emergencies.
And just because the deluge skipped my location doesn’t mean someone else isn’t going to get hammered by the predicted weather system.
HRRR+ICON SUN Feb 4 2024 9:22AM PT Wind Gusts
Climbing up to 70+ mph by 2PM for San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties, and the transverse mountain ranges. Lots of calls for trees, powerlines and wind damage. A few warming fires. Good chance there will be power and telecom outages. Not great considering the amount of rain coming this way.
I wouldn’t count on rotor support in some of these areas for a little while.
NWS 5-Day Precipitation Forecast
Looks like the points of maximum rainfall accumulations have shifted around a bit on the Santa Cruz, upper Los Padres, Angeles and Bernadino ranges. North Bay Area flooding is ongoing.
