Avalanche Warning Issued In Multiple Areas Of Colorado Through Wednesday

Ella Boyd
·2 min read

The Colorado Avalanche Info Center issued an avalanche warning, in effect starting Monday night and lasting through Wednesday morning for most of the Central Mountains and parts of the Northern and Southern Mountains.

"Significant snowfall and strong winds are creating very dangerous avalanche conditions."

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A post shared by Colorado Avalanche Info Center (@coavalancheinfo)

The CAIC reported that skiers should "expect avalanches to break wide across terrain features and run long distances, sometimes to valley floors. Many avalanches will run naturally."

For all areas of Colorado on the map below currently listed as having high avalanche danger as of February 27th, they will drop to moderate or less for February 28th.

Colorado's avalanche danger, mapped out. Courtesy of <a href="https://avalanche.state.co.us/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:CAIC.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">CAIC. </a>
Colorado's avalanche danger, mapped out. Courtesy of CAIC.

"Travel in avalanche terrain is not recommended during this time. As the storm picks up tonight you can expect to see many more avalanches similar to and larger than this one in the photo on the CAIC's Instagram from Independence Pass."

The full forecast report that due to the powerful storm moving in late Monday night, some places like the Ragged Wilderness could see close to a foot of snow by dawn Tuesday.

Snowfall will continue through the day with wind speeds in the 40-50mph range. Even though the models are drying up a little bit, the storm could still bring heavy snowfall in the 1”/hour range.

Even if you do not care for statistics, the CAIC insists that the bottom line this week is that this storm is going to bring on a rapid change to the snowpack and the danger will increase rapidly.

Stay safe, go with a buddy, and bring the proper equipment in case of a worst case scenario. And, it goes without saying, but keep checking those snow reports every day to build a scope of how the terrain is reacting to the changing weather.

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