New CAIC Tool

[planet54]

Has anyone checked out this new tool to see how useful it could be to us? I have not dug into it yet.
https://forecasts.avalanche.state.co.us/explorer/

[davisrice4]

Yeah, I find it very helpful as it shows where avalanches are being triggered by so many variables, and you can select choose the specific characteristic of avalanche you want to see at that time. It is a very well thought out update in my opinion, and will speed up the process of viewing avalanches a fair bit.

[SkaredShtles]

Yeah, I find it very helpful as it shows where avalanches are being triggered by so many variables, and you can select choose the specific characteristic of avalanche you want to see at that time. It is a very well thought out update in my opinion, and will speed up the process of viewing avalanches a fair bit.

Agreed - it is a very nice, modern interface. Very well done.

[jrbren_vt]

Very nice thanks for sharing. Question, for every avalanche reported, how many theoretically do we think occur that are not reported ? I played with this a bit, and went back 30 days, it says there have been zero avalanches in the Sangre de Cristo range. I know it has been a lean snow year in the south eastern Colorado Rockies, but do others see the same thing ? I have not been down there since early fall. I did see a recent trip report here (Challenger) where the snow looked thin in the photos. Could we conclude that this area is relatively safe until the next snowfall ? avalanche.org shows this area as yellow (moderate avalanche danger). Just curious, I do not have any immediate plans to head down there in the next few weeks.

[Jorts]

Very nice thanks for sharing. Question, for every avalanche reported, how many theoretically do we think occur that are not reported ? I played with this a bit, and went back 30 days, it says there have been zero avalanches in the Sangre de Cristo range. I know it has been a lean snow year in the south eastern Colorado Rockies, but do others see the same thing ? I have not been down there since early fall. I did see a recent trip report here (Challenger) where the snow looked thin in the photos. Could we conclude that this area is relatively safe until the next snowfall ? avalanche.org shows this area as yellow (moderate avalanche danger). Just curious, I do not have any immediate plans to head down there in the next few weeks.

That’s the proverbial tree falling in the forest with nobody around the hear it.

[k_fergie]

Very nice thanks for sharing. Question, for every avalanche reported, how many theoretically do we think occur that are not reported ? I played with this a bit, and went back 30 days, it says there have been zero avalanches in the Sangre de Cristo range. I know it has been a lean snow year in the south eastern Colorado Rockies, but do others see the same thing ? I have not been down there since early fall. I did see a recent trip report here (Challenger) where the snow looked thin in the photos. Could we conclude that this area is relatively safe until the next snowfall ? avalanche.org shows this area as yellow (moderate avalanche danger). Just curious, I do not have any immediate plans to head down there in the next few weeks.

That’s the proverbial tree falling in the forest with nobody around the hear it.

I'll add to this to say that the CAIC does not have a dedicated forecaster for that zone. They heavily rely on user reports and remote data to forecast that zone, and there can be many days in a row where they haven't had boots on the ground. I have observed conditions fairly different from the forecast (forecasted PS problem, but we observed a pack literally 100% full of facets lol) when traveling in the Sangres, but it does generally hold. My advice would be to take the forecast in mind, but to err on the side of caution and your observations

[davisrice4]

Very nice thanks for sharing. Question, for every avalanche reported, how many theoretically do we think occur that are not reported ? I played with this a bit, and went back 30 days, it says there have been zero avalanches in the Sangre de Cristo range. I know it has been a lean snow year in the south eastern Colorado Rockies, but do others see the same thing ? I have not been down there since early fall. I did see a recent trip report here (Challenger) where the snow looked thin in the photos. Could we conclude that this area is relatively safe until the next snowfall ? avalanche.org shows this area as yellow (moderate avalanche danger). Just curious, I do not have any immediate plans to head down there in the next few weeks.

I would say there are probably a ton of unreported avalanches. The ones reported must be visible by people, and further, visible by people who are interested in sharing information with the community. With the more remote ranges like the sangres, gores, deep San juans, etc. there must be many avalanches that go unnoticed. The snow sure doesn't stop sliding just because humans aren't around.

[uwe]

Excellent progression in CAIC bringing new and improved visual data to the public. Kudos to CAIC.

[stickmann]

This looks like a nice tool to analyze previous seasonal data. I'd be hesitant to consider this as a new tool to use in forecasting. The CAIC still relies on user observations, as mentioned in a post above, which will always mean uncertainty in the data set. Jorts points of the fallacy of no observed avalanches equals safe terrain. CAIC had this information available previously and now it is in a nice dashboard which is much appreciated. I have data wrangled and analyzed observations in Summit County from 2011-2020 seasons and found very little correlation between NWS provided daily snowfall, temperature, and/or wind data when compared to CAIC's observed avalanche counts and incidents, accounting for a daily lag of 1-3. I even did a sanity check to see if there are more reported incidents on the weekends but more people out did not consistently mean more observed avalanches. Not that it is surprising you should analyze the snowpack on-site for safety but I thought it was interesting that, in the small data set I looked at, there was almost no predictability when using CAIC's observations data as gold.

[peter303]

Very nice thanks for sharing. Question, for every avalanche reported, how many theoretically do we think occur that are not reported ? I played with this a bit, and went back 30 days, it says there have been zero avalanches in the Sangre de Cristo range. I know it has been a lean snow year in the south eastern Colorado Rockies, but do others see the same thing ? I have not been down there since early fall. I did see a recent trip report here (Challenger) where the snow looked thin in the photos. Could we conclude that this area is relatively safe until the next snowfall ? avalanche.org shows this area as yellow (moderate avalanche danger). Just curious, I do not have any immediate plans to head down there in the next few weeks.

I would say there are probably a ton of unreported avalanches. The ones reported must be visible by people, and further, visible by people who are interested in sharing information with the community. With the more remote ranges like the sangres, gores, deep San juans, etc. there must be many avalanches that go unnoticed. The snow sure doesn't stop sliding just because humans aren't around.

I suppose this could be a side-product of trying to directly measure snowpack shapes from satellite data: photos, Lidar, Synthetic Aperture Radar ... There are some people researching snowpack shape for improved water accuracy.

The USGS has a related program to detect landslides this way. For example after the recent large Puerto Rico earthquake, satellites were used to detect landslides in remote areas. Besides landslide detection, there is the more insidious problem of forecasting potential slides in areas of frequent slides, future large earthquakes, post forest fires, super storm events.

I think A.I. software is being studied for two applications: First is the automation of scanning huge amounts of satellite data on a regular basis. (Not enough interns to do all this ) Second to extract models of slides from the data when you dont know the most important causes. Physics gets you only so far.

I think there were a number of talks on these subjects at the American Geophysical Union meeting last month. I barely have the energy to view the hundreds of talks in my specialty, much less look at the ten thousand talks outside of it. But occasional glances at the forest of poster blackboards looks like every specialty is borrowing each others techniques.

[Boggy B]

I think an overlay format (as for fire history) would be better suited for this. Sure, "no data" doesn't indicate lack of avalanche potential, but just knowing which paths have slid in the last few decades and their extents is half the battle, particularly above treeline where historic avalanche paths aren't obvious in aerial imagery. Tom and Jay both mentioned having seen or triggered the path implicated in the recent fatal accident--if such observations published by the CAIC were incorporated into a planning tool like Caltopo, that could certainly prevent accidents, especially among users who wish to avoid avalanche terrain altogether.

[curt86iroc]

I think an overlay format (as for fire history) would be better suited for this. Sure, "no data" doesn't indicate lack of avalanche potential, but just knowing which paths have slid in the last few decades and their extents is half the battle, particularly above treeline where historic avalanche paths aren't obvious in aerial imagery. Tom and Jay both mentioned having seen or triggered the path implicated in the recent fatal accident--if such observations published by the CAIC were incorporated into a planning tool like Caltopo, that could certainly prevent accidents, especially among users who wish to avoid avalanche terrain altogether.

why would a planning tool like this be helpful if you wanted to avoid avi terrain altogether? ski slopes under 30deg (on them or under them). do this and you will never be in avalanche terrain. no tool needed...