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I’ve always felt that if you’re a weather forecaster, or an avalanche forecaster, the goal of every forecast should be to effectively reach, and teach, as much as possible about your topics. If your forecasts are about the snowpack and related avalanche danger, your teaching should be about the snow structure, and how it’s likely spread across the landscape, and how “approachable” or amenable to travel it is, and how you need to manage terrain to maximize safety. And if the forecasts are about the weather, your teaching should be about how to interpret and make the best use of them, and how the past, current and future weather are or should be impacting avalanche danger.

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And since there are so many ways that people learn, over many years of forecasting, I tried some rather unorthodox methods of reaching out to aid in understanding or for helping emphasize especially difficult or dangerous avalanche situations. Like poetry. While there are those who would discount this as weird poetry or perhaps rail against the lack of any pentameter of merit, to me the rhymes expressed a lot that straight narrative forecasts just couldn’t capture.

 

And from feedback received, the rhymes expressed some difficult concepts in such a way that appealed to many in both the public back country snow community and avalanche professional audience. Maybe poetry increased the learning, experience, or maybe it just provided a better way to remember, so the knowledge gained could be more useful in assessing the danger in the field. The linked pages below show some of these rhymes—sometimes whimsical and sometimes serious—that accompanied selected mountain weather and avalanche forecasts while at the Northwest Avalanche Center…from 2006 through 2012 when I finally hung up my forecasting hat, along with some poems more recent and composed for avalanche education presentations. Seems like some of the inspirations for rhyming would arrive unbidden at some point, and I felt compelled to write down thoughts and verses that seemed appropriate at the time. I do know that I have awoken in the middle of the night and had to write something down. Sad, I know.  In any case, I hope you find the rhymes and accompanying information pleasing and informative. Each of the links below connects to the corresponding year of avalanche forecast poems...and they have been arranged by the time of year of the forecast or of their creation—Mark Moore (2025)​