Each year, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) hosts its Colorado Snow and Avalanche Workshop, drawing in hundreds of avalanche forecasters from around North America for a weekend covering education, sharing snowpack research, and meeting industry experts. The theme of this year’s workshop was new tools designed to answer a key question: how far will an avalanche travel?
“The question always really comes back to this one question, ‘will it reach the road? Will the avalanche reach the road?’” CAIC geospatial data specialist Valerie Foley told Colorado Springs’ CBS KKTV.
This winter, CAIC will use two tools to predict the distance an avalanche will slide, the first of which is drones. Experts will fly drones over uncovered terrain before the season starts, and then will return to the area after a storm to measure how much snow fell. The drones and scientists collect data that feeds into a Swiss-developed model called Snowpacker, which simulates snowpack layers and gives researchers an idea of where instability could be.
According to CBS KKTV, CAIC had field-tested these tools last year, and they proved successful.
“We had one really interesting case last winter where we had an avalanche and a real event to run these tools and compare everything to,” Foley told the station. “And our model identified a release area very similar to what actually happened, and the simulated avalanche stopped well short of the highway just like the real one did.”
Predicting avalanche distance is critical for keeping people safe when driving on roads near slopes. The new tools allow CAIC to more accurately predict avalanche distance, helping them to make the right decisions about closing roads or keeping them open.
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“If we close it too early, we can back up traffic for no reason. If we close it too late, we could put vehicles at risk. So, forecasters right now and historically have answered that question through observations, weather, and their deep experience with all of these paths,” Foley said.
With its drones, CAIC hopes it can predict the activity of more avalanches this winter. More avalanches also means more opportunities to test the Snowpacker model.
“We’re expanding our areas that we’re surveying this winter with the drones,” Foley said in KKTV’s article. “So, with the hope that we’ll get even more avalanches and get more events to kind of test this tool on. So, so far, really encouraging results, and we’re really excited to keep developing this tool and improving it.”
With the 2026-27 season just weeks away in Colorado, CAIC is already making big-time moves for avalanche safety this winter with its new distance prediction tools. With drones and the snowpack layer simulation model, the organization will be able to better predict the distance avalanches will travel. And for Coloradans, that means safer roads.
