Speakers and sessions have been announced for the 20th annual Colorado Avalanche Information Center and Friends of CAIC Colorado Snow and Avalanche Workshop on Oct. 14-15, which will be virtual for the second year.

The opening day will start with a session on avalanche forecasting tools, with talks on the subjects of simulating avalanche problem types to track changing conditions in different climates, an operational test of automatic danger level predictions in Switzerland, creating regional snowpack summaries from model simulations and the effect of social media on avalanche risk.

The second session, on avalanche release, will cover an experimental and numerical investigation of dynamic crack propagation in weak layers and an operational model for the evaluation of avalanche release zones.

The day’s third and final session, on climate and avalanches, will feature talks about climate drivers of large-magnitude avalanches in Montana as well as atmospheric rivers and the changing precipitation regime of the West.

On Day 2, the opening session is a review of last season’s avalanche accidents in the U.S.

The second session will be on avalanche accidents as well as search and rescue, including an analysis of two complex avalanche rescue missions in the San Juan Mountains, a forecaster’s perspective of the Wilson Glade avalanche accident and a hypothermia update.

The day’s third session is specific to avalanche mitigation work and will feature talks about measuring explosive over-pressures from remote avalanche control systems and a toolkit of common practices for operational ski cutting.

And the event’s final session specific to forecasting will include talks covering forecasting wet slab avalanches, a look at an avalanche forecast on the day of an accident and a 2021-22 winter weather outlook.

For more information and to register, visit Bit.ly/CSAW2021Lineup.