Avalanche Facts For Kids
An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, triggered by various factors, posing significant risks to life and property.
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Key Points
Photos of Avalanche
Loose snow avalanches (far left) and slab avalanches (near center) near Mount Shuksan in the North Cascades mountains. Fracture propagation is relatively limited.
15 cm deep, soft slab avalanche triggered by a snowboarder near Heliotrope Ridge, Mount Baker in March 2010. Multiple crown fracture lines are visible in the top-middle of the image. Note the granular characteristic of the debris in the foreground that results from the slab breaking up during descent.
Avalanche on Simplon Pass (2019)
In steep avalanche-prone terrain, traveling on ridges is generally safer than traversing the slopes.
A cornice of snow about to fall. Cracks in the snow are visible in area (1). Area (3) fell soon after this picture was taken, leaving area (2) as the new edge.
Avalanche path with 800 metres (2,600 ft) vertical fall in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, Washington state. Avalanche paths in alpine terrain may be poorly defined because of limited vegetation. Below tree line, avalanche paths are often delineated by vegetative trim lines created by past avalanches. The start zone is visible near the top of the image, the track is in the middle of the image and clearly denoted by vegetative trimlines, and the runout zone is shown at the bottom of the image. One possible timeline is as follows: an avalanche forms in the start zone near the ridge, and then descends the track, until coming to rest in the runout zone.
After surface hoarfrost becomes buried by later snowfall, the buried hoar layer can be a weak layer upon which upper layers can slide.
After digging a snow pit, it is possible to evaluate the snowpack for unstable layers. In this picture, snow from a weak layer has been easily scraped away by hand, leaving a horizontal line in the wall of the pit.
United States Forest Service avalanche danger advisories.