Latest News – Wallowa Avalanche Center

Our July Board of Directors meeting yielded lots of good stuff that all of us have either completed or are in the midst of preparing for next winter.

WAC met with our Senior Advisor, Don Sharaf who offered some great suggestions for improvements which you will likely see on our website this winter. Julian is busy planning for some major changes to the environment that our website runs within and just might be implemented for next winter.

WAC submitted a proposal to the USFS Enterprise Office intended to get the wheels rolling on development of a partnership between WAC and Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

Our weather station deployment is now imminent. During next week (weather permitting) WAC, along with our very supportive community group (JosephOregonWeather, our Sheriff’s Office, and Wallowa Lake Tramway) will be placing a complete weather station on top of Mt. Howard at 8150 feet. This station will provide the following data: Wind Speed, Wind Direction, Current temperature, Humidity, Barometric pressure, and Rainfall.

This data will be available free of charge on www.wallowaavalanchecenter.org ‘Local Weather button’ but also on www.josephoregonweather.com. Look for data availability late next month (August).

Check back often as we keep updating this blog with the latest. Hope you summer is going well ‘cuz ours sure is.

Keith

Many meetings have been scheduled to advance the cause of WAC and propel us into the future.

Throughout the month of July we have planned to meet with:

• The USFS Enterprise Office until the unfortunate loss of the entire office. We will schedule later when things have settled down.
• The Director of the National Avalanche Center
• Our Senior Advisor
• Several other avalanche center directors or longtime avalanche practitioners of note

Results of these meetings will help direct us into the future and develop a sound relationship with our local Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

In addition we are developing relationships and soliciting assistance from folks in the snowmobile community and Anthony Lakes Ski Resort.

We continue to work toward the installation of weather instrumentation through a cooperative effort with Wallowa County Sheriffs Office, Wallowa Lake Tramway and Scott Hampton of JosephOregonWeather. This endeavor, when operational, will provide important weather data from the summit of Mt. Howard. More details will surely follow by the end of this month after exploratory trips up there yield our installation schedule.

Stay tuned…..

Keith Stebbings