It's crucial for us to recognize and identify different kinds of weather hazards while skiing. This page lists out several commonly-occur weather hazards which you should pay attention to.

1. Avalanches

Avalanches are one of the most dangerous hazards for people doing skiing. The main formation of avalanches is the unstability of snowpack. Avalanches can be divided into 2 main categories. The first one is loose-snow avalanche, it is also called the sluff avalanche. It is mainly because of the surface or near-surface snow that is not well-bonded. It does not usually do any major structural damage or bury people but sometimes it is possible if it carries people into a terrain trap. Therefore, we still need to pay attention to it even though it is not that hazardous.  

The other one is slab avalanche. It occurs when a layer somewhere beneath the surface layer fail, and the cohesive layers above it fracture into a block and 
slide downhill. Mostly, slab avalanches typically are larger than sluff avalanches which cause more destructive and more likely to burry people. We should definitely avoid skiing at the places where slab avalanche is easily occur.

2. Visibility Hazard

Visibility is crucial for doing all kinds of outdoor activities! In low visibilities, fast skiing can somehow makes us much more difficult to see and avoid the obstacles and danger. For instant, foggy weather, when we are under a high pressure system, there might be valley fog formed because of the cold air pooling in the valley.

Also, heavy snowing can be another crucial hazard for limiting our visibility. When we are in low pressure system, especially the cold front, the precipitation behind the front will start as rain and then transit to snow. As a result, we might encounter heavy snow and it will cause visibility hazard.

Another type of this hazard may be the snow blindness. If the weather is extremely sunny and without any cloud, it seems perfect for skiing. However, if you do not have a google, you might be exposed to snow blindness which may also generates hazardously impact to your visibility.

3. Extreme Temperature

Besides the two potential hazards listed above, temperature could also be crucial to skiing. The most suitable and comfortable temperature for skiing is between -8°C to +3°C. The unusual cold temperature may caused by wind chill which will make you feel colder than the actual temperature. More seriously, you may also get frostbite and hypothermia. Technically, we should call off our ski trip when the temperature is below -15°C.

On the contrary, the unusual warm temperature would result in strong insolation causing hyperthermia and sunburn. What's more? Extreme warm temperature would lead the snowmelt which result in wet slab avalanches while extreme cold temperature would result in unstable snow layer which may also generate avalanches.