B.C.’s southern interior is enjoying a mini-March heatwave during the first week of spring.
Between Monday and Friday, 140 temperature records were eclipsed across the province as thermometres pushed close to 20°C.
However, with the beautiful weather comes greatly increased avalanche risk in the southern Interior’s back country.
According to Avalanche Canada, the risk of avalanche ranges from considerable to high in popular areas such as the South Columbia, North Columbia and Glacier National Park mountain ranges.
“This is the first big warming to hit our snowpack, which is still fairly complex and winter-like. Any time the snowpack is hit with a big change, it tends to destabilize,” said Grant Helgeson, senior avalanche forecaster.
“The temperatures are forecast to increase substantially this week, with no nighttime cooling. This will weaken the snowpack on all aspects, increasing the possibility of large natural avalanches as well making it easier for the weight of a person to trigger deeper weak layers.”
Busy ski resorts are certainly not immune from the back country danger, on Wednesday an avalanche occurred on the backside of SilverStar mountain resort where a man needed to be airlifted to hospital.
For updated information on avalanche conditions in the back country, click here.
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