Climatic variations affect snowpack characteristics, which in turn affect avalanche activity.
Ed LaChapelle, Richard and Betsy Armstrong, and recently Cary Mock and Karl Birkeland have subsequently further analyzed the geographic patterns of snow avalanche climates. This zonation was formulated in order to provide a general framework for understanding how climatic variables influence avalanche activity. The coastal zone is characterized by abundant snowfall, higher snow densities, higher temperatures, and higher numbers of avalanches. The continental zone is characterized by lower temperatures, lower snowfall, lower snow densities, and extensive faceted crystal growth resulting from high temperature gradients in the snowpack. Relatively low numbers of avalanches occur in the continental zone, but this zone has a higher avalanche hazard potential due to difficulties in predicting the behavior of buried layers of faceted crystals.