Avalanche warnings in place for Sawtooth Mountains

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - We have some light rain showers Friday morning as it is the start as to what is to be a long wet weekend.

In other areas such as central Idaho, though, we have already seen a lot of mixed precipitation from the past 36 hours.

Many valley areas throughout Blaine and Custer counties have picked up on an inch or two of snowfall with a lot more rainfall making those areas a slushy mess.

The mountain peaks across the sawtooths though have picked up as much as a foot of snow already.

The rapid snowfall in these areas in particular has greatly increased the avalanche danger.

Thus, most of the mountains across Blaine and Custer counties are currently under an avalanche warning for the rest of Friday.

This elevated threat has been months in the making.

"We had had a long drought in december that ended in early january. And all this action with this atmospheric river and all this snowfall and wind loading is sitting atop that week there," Ethan Davis said. "So we expect some very large natural avalanches to have already occurred and maybe continue to occur."

The Sawtooth Avalanche Center says this increased risk should stay in place for awhile even after the storm is gone.

One interesting aspect for the avalanche center is they usually report every avalanche that happens across their forecast zone in central Idaho.

They haven't had a single one of these reports though in the past two days.

That's because these reports are based on visual accounts and the visibility has been so terribly low with the snow and wind that they can't see anything yet.

The avalanche center said they are expected to get around and have more reports by the start of the weekend.