Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Avalanches really top of mind. This also following that tragedy
that took place in California where eight backcountry skiers were
found dead. One as of late has still been unaccounted for.
And now we’re seeing the waves of snow in the
high country locally, which is great for our local ski resorts,
but also it’s packing down on the thin snowpack. We
already had the avalanche danger starting to rise. Joining us<\/p>\n
(00:23):
on the KWA Common Spirit Health Hotline to talk more
about it is Ethan Green, director of the Colorado Avalanche
Information Center. Ethan, thank you so much for your time
this morning. Thanks for having me on so I feel
like we usually talk earlier in the season when it
comes to just our avalanche concerned. From what you’ve seen
as of late, has been pretty quiet when it comes<\/p>\n
(00:44):
to the avalanche danger, and now it’s really going to
start ramping up with these waves of snow that we’ve
seen in the high country this week.<\/p>\n
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah.<\/p>\n
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well, as usual, we’ve seen the avoc kaker Evan slowed
this winter, but with the really low snow, we’ve seen
periods of all low danger in the middle of the winter,
which is really unusual for us. Like you’re saying that
is changing. Right now, we have avalanche warnings with high
danger across large parts of the high Country. Natural avalanches<\/p>\n
(01:14):
are likely. Human triggered avalanches are very likely. So people
really need to be thinking about avalanches as they’re heading
into the high Country this week and over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Speaker 1 (01:23):
What usually causes such an extreme avalanche danger. Is it
that like wave of snow. Is it a lot of
snow all at once? Is it not having a ton
of snow and then getting piled on with snow. What
are kind of the chances we usually see when we
can see this danger rise.<\/p>\n
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, what we’re seeing right now is that we have
a fairly weak snowpack in some places, really an exceptionally
weak snowpack because of that low snow, that thin snowpack
we’ve seen all year. Now we’re seeing these waves of
snow like you’re talking about and really strong winds coming through,
and so that’s piling a lot of weight on that
week underlying structure, and that means it’s really easy to<\/p>\n
(02:00):
trigger avalanches. Most of the avalanches we’ve been seeing are
fairly small, but as more snow piles up and winds
drift that snow, we’re going to see larger avalanches, probably
this weekend.<\/p>\n
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I’m curious what are the non obvious factors that you
guys use in ranking the avalanche risk at any given time.
I mean, obviously it is obvious if we get three
feet of snow that the risk goes up. But what
else do you guys look at besides just the amount
of snow.<\/p>\n
Speaker 3 (02:34):
It’s really the existing snowpack before that snow comes in.
You know’s if that three feet of snow you’re talking
about is falling on something that’s really strong, we may
not see a big bump in the avalanche changer. It’ll
go up, but maybe not that much. If it’s falling
on something that’s weak, then we can see the avalanche
danger spike quickly, which is really what we’re seeing this week.<\/p>\n
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You talk a little bit about the human triggered avalanches,
and I know we have a lot aboutdoor andenthusiasts in
our states. They’re going to head to the backcountry regardless
of the avalanche concerns. But what do you generally see.
I mean, I know you can’t really talk about what
took place in California, ethan, but I am curious if
you see things like that, if that’s similar to not
to the scale of tragedy, but similar to what can<\/p>\n
(03:16):
take place when we see these avalanche concerns in our state.<\/p>\n
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, a lot of these avalanche accidents have some similarities,
and you’re right, like with this one in California, there’s
certainly some questions about the decisions of the group was
making and that we really won’t know until you know,
the investigation takes place and folks if they’re willing or
willing to talk about it. And that’s really the human<\/p>\n
(03:42):
part about these avalanche accidents. You know, we have natural
hazard accidents that takes the hazard and it takes the people,
and you know, we try to understand both of those
whenever there’s an accident. The natural part of that accident
is really a huge feet of snow and extremely strong<\/p>\n
(04:04):
winds falling on a really weak snowpack. And so we’re
not seeing that magnitude of a weather event here in Colorado,
but we are seeing, you know, essentially the same thing
where we have a week underlying snowpack, we have dorms
coming through loading it, and that’s just causing the avalanche
danger to go up. Really what people should be thinking
about in Colorado, right now is making sure that they<\/p>\n
(04:26):
have a good plan to go out and enjoy the
backcountry like you’re talking about, but avoid the avalanche changer.
And the way to do that is to check the
avalanche forecast, know what the conditions are where you’re planning
to go, and maybe change your plans, maybe go to
a place where the avalanche changer is lower this.<\/p>\n
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Weekend eight and again provide that information of where people
should go when you can check some of the forecast
and then again some of the equipment that is like
a must when you’re heading to the back country.<\/p>\n
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, the easiest thing to do is to go to
Colorado dot gov slash avalanche and just click on the
place or type in the place name where you’re going.
There’s also a phone out that you can get off
of any of the app stores. As far as equipment,
if you are going into avalanche train, everybody in the
group should be carrying an avalanche rescue transceiver, a pro pull,
and a shovel and they need to know how to<\/p>\n
(05:14):
use that equipment as well.<\/p>\n
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Ethan Green, director of Colorado Avalanche Information Center, thank you
so much for this information this morning. Hopefully everyone stays
safe heading to the backcountry this weekend. We appreciate your time.<\/p>\n
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Thank you, have a great weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed. Speaker 1 (00:00):Avalanches really top of mind. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[56267,193,192,144,5277,5,32586,32585,32583,4,32584,49,13071,56268],"class_list":["post-464121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-colorado-avalanche","tag-2-19-26-interview-ethan-greene-director-of-the-colorado-avalanche-information-center","tag-avalanche","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-coloradoavalanche","tag-hockey","tag-iheart","tag-iheartradio","tag-listen","tag-nhl","tag-on-demand","tag-radio","tag-talk","tag-the-ross-kaminsky-show"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116100602544121520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}