Automated prediction of wet-snow avalanche activity in the Swiss Alps

Abstract

Wet-snow avalanches are triggered by the infiltration of liquid water which weakens the snowpack. Wet-snow avalanches are among the most destructive avalanches, yet their release mechanism is not sufficiently understood for a process-based prediction model. Therefore, we followed a data-driven approach and developed a random forest model, depending on slope aspect, to predict the local wet-snow avalanche activity at the locations of 124 automated weather stations distributed throughout the Swiss Alps. The input variables were the snow and weather data recorded by the stations over the past 20 years. The target variable was based on manual observations over the same 20-year period. To filter out erroneous reports, we defined the days with wet-snow avalanches in a stringent manner, selecting only the most extreme active or inactive days, which reduced the size of the dataset but increased the reliability of the target variable. The model was trained with weather variables and variables computed from simulated snow stratigraphy in 38 $^\circ$ slopes facing the 4 cardinal directions. While model development and validation were done in nowcast mode, we also studied model performance in 24-hour forecast mode by using input variables computed from a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Overall, the performance was good in both nowcast and forecast mode (f1-score around 0.8). To assess model performance beyond the stringent definition of wet-snow avalanche days, we compared model predictions to wet-snow avalanche activity over the entire Swiss Alps, based on the raw data over 8 winters. We obtained a Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.71. Hence, our model represents a step toward the application of support tools in operational wet-snow avalanche forecasting.