Hi, this is a side project I've been working on for the better part of the last year. Unfortunately we've also had 5 avalanche deaths in Washington (my home state) in the last week alone. Preventing these deaths is my primary goal.

I originally came up with this idea when I was working on another project to help the Ski Guides of Hokkaido Japan share snow and avalanche information as there is no avalanche forecasts there.

In the US (as opposed to Canada and Europe) our avalanche forecasting is generally only lightly funded. I wanted to find a way to increase the capability of our forecasting while also building a platform which allowed us to improve the forecast products themselves. The Open Avalanche Project is meant to both be a data and experimentation platform for this. Operationalizing the data and using ML to predict the aspects of an avalanche forecast seemed like a good way to begin to move towards that goal.

This goes beyond what existing avalanche forecasts do in that it has a gridded resolution as opposed to a regional estimate. It also has been built to operate at scale as I would like to cover every avalanche hazard area in the world with a forecast.

I'd love to answer any questions folks have about the approach taken or the goals of the project.