Avalanche Potential Mapping

Well, saw this announcement, not live yet..  Can guess where the data comes from..  They do an interesting job on fire mapping, so maybe this will be of interest.    Avalanche potential

Thanks for the link. The fire mapping is very interesting.

I have some reservations about this and will be curious to see what they roll out. The "fire mapping" product appears to simply pull off the InciWeb site, I fail to see how it is any different than simply visiting that provider.

Will this product simply be an overlay of slope angle shading similar to what CalTopo already does? Or will be it be NWAC/Regional Avalanche Center's forecast overlayed? A combination of the two? What I don't want to see is any sort of product that the general public may unintentionally rely on to tell them what is "safe" terrain. People love to use technology to make their lives easier, but it's possible that this will encourage folks to shortcut the trip planning process of their travel in avalanche terrain, which I think is a very important step that deserves active consideration. If they are going to put someone else's existing forecast over a map and call it a new product, what is the point? That will only serve to confuse users.

I agree with hefeweizen, only I'm not prepared to be nearly as charitable in my remarks!

This is a spectacularly bad idea, and worse, it's absolutely and totally unsupported by science. That makes it pseudo-science, which is harmless at best, and dangerous at worst.

With respect to mapping 'avalanche potential', there is one particular source of uncertainty that must be absolutely respected:

* Uncertainty due to incremental changes to the snowpack across space and time.

Even if you have high-resolution stratigraphy for a fairly large area ( which they won't ) and the results of numerous tests, including shear frame tests, ice grain analysis, etc. ( which they won't ), and even if you collect astoundingly meticulous records, you simply cannot make a prediction for anything larger than a single slope. As just about everyone here already knows, it's debatable if you can even use this information to make a safe prediction for a single slope.

But once someone takes this information and makes a map from it, it gains an air of certainty and respectability that it most certainly does not deserve.

A few years ago, NWAC introduced a feature on their web site that overlaid the public avalanche forecast onto maps of the forecast area. I wrote a blog post critical of the idea, and my thoughts haven't changed.

avalanchesafety.blogspot.com/2012/04/pseudoscience.html

It wasn't a good idea when NWAC did it, and there is no chance in hell that this outfit is more qualified than NWAC.

Not interested in a pile-on slam, BUT.... yes, I agree, the cultural thirst for information (like easy access) may render this product more harmful than good. But what I feel I must mention is that the fire map shows no fires within 100 miles of Santa Rosa, CA today.

I don't know cookie. I think the nwac maps have to have some positive role in mitigating risk in some of their audience. I imagine a lot of people on the red days choose lifts or another activity. Too many considerable days with great trip reports from the lot of us probably creates a confusing grey area. Maybe some more specific definitions based on snow profiles would make the changing of stoplight maps more useful?