Utah experienced its lowest snow year since 1980 despite a record-wet October. And when a storm did arrive, backcountry experts say the conditions were “ripe for avalanches.”
Utah Avalanche Center forecaster Drew Hardesty analyzed the conditions leading up to the post-Valentines Day storm that landed on a dry, faceted October snowpack.
“That snow on the ground just starts to sit and rot and starts to facet, and it looks like these rounded grains, the vapor rises up through the snow pack and creates these showy, striated, faceted crystals,” Hardesty said in a video of the center’s review.
December brought the Beehive State more rain than snow and almost no precipitation in January, creating more dry, faceted and unstable snow.
“And boom, just after Valentine's Day, the tap turned back on February 17,” he said. “Essentially, we had a storm that kicked in about 50 inches, about five inches of snow water equivalent.”
Avalanche forecaster Trent Meisenheimer went into the field to examine a slide to find the new light snow sitting on top of the dry January layer.
“This layer right here, it's just incredible how weak this snow is. And then when we add this slab to the top, it's the perfect recipe for slab avalanches,” he said when reviewing a February slide in the field.
The fatalities came in quick succession during the next five days. A snowmobiler died in Wasatch County’s backcountry on Feb. 18 outside Midway.
The next day, a girl died when she and her family skied into an unpatrolled area near Brighton. Meisenheimer said Utah leads the nation in avalanche fatalities involving riders who exit ski area boundaries.
“Many of our ski areas are just adjacent to public lands. And so it's really amazing that we get to access those through ski areas,” he said in the UAC’s review. “And unfortunately, when you put people, and then you have avalanches and risk back there, we see accidents.”
Of Utah’s 139 avalanche fatalities since 1941, 28 of those occurred just outside ski area boundaries.
Two more fatal avalanches occurred Feb. 21 and Feb. 22, including the second Wasatch County snowmobiler death.
Avalanche Center director Paige Pagnucco said the center’s analysis found the rider made a fatal error by failing to check whether his beacon was transmitting before heading to the backcountry.
“If he had had his beacon on, it might have been a very different outcome, a less catastrophic outcome,” she said.
The center reports all four fatalities occurred during an avalanche warning or when its daily forecasts said the danger was high or considerable.
