Flip up your hood folks because the wet weather has begun! After a weekend of great weather we're looking at some unseasonably warm temps with copious amounts of liquid precip coming down the pike. It appears that we'll be easing into it today with the real deluge scheduled for early morning on Wednesday. Today's forecast calls for up to .2in(.5cm) of liquid equivalent and the Summit has already climbed above freezing as of 7am. Our concerns today lie with the largest sections of windslab that developed at the end of last week on E and SE aspects. Two days of decent weekend weather helped to push along the stabilization of these areas and the mountain saw a good crowd of folks trying to work off their extra serving of leftovers. Adventurers wisely avoided the areas of greatest concern such as Central Gully, the Lip and the upper section of Hillman's. These areas currently harbor large sections of windslab that will be the primary concern once the rain begins in earnest. We feel that natural avalanche activity is unlikely today under the current weather forecast but we'll be keeping our eyes on the sky. If the rain exceeds the forecasted amount we'll be anticipating the danger to rise into the Considerable realm with the possibility of natural activity becoming greater. Rain will be falling on a variety of surface conditions including old crust, unconsolidated powder and windslabs of varying degrees of hardness. Any liquid precip will increase the stress on the snowpack without adding any accompanying strength. Where the exposed windslab is thinner the rain will percolate down and hit the underlying surface more quickly. This next layer is dominated by an older raincrust in many locations and would impede further percolation. Additional liquid could potentially flow downhill between the layers deteriorating the bond that holds the two together. This detrimental process will likely continue through the week and you should anticipate decreasing stability until we start to get some deep freezing in the snowpack.

Large snowfields and isolated pockets of instability both have their dangers. If a snowfield is big enough to recreate on it's big enough to avalanche. Remember that early season conditions can produce some interesting activity so take this rainy week to dust off the equipment. Don't wait any longer to refresh your avalanche skills. Pull out your beacon, practice, and spend a couple bucks on a fresh set of high quality batteries. Review your safe travel rules, techniques for assessing snow stability, and sign up for an avalanche course. We now have all the avalanche courses offered in the Valley this winter on our website, tuckerman.org. Sign yourself or a loved one up now!