Role of pore pressure gradients in sustaining frontal particle entrainment in eruption currents: The case of powder snow avalanches

[1] We present a model that underscores the role played by the porous snow cover in sustaining large, rapid, dilute powder avalanches over weakly cohesive snow. The model attributes massive localized material injection into the avalanche head to synergistic pressure gradients established within the porous cover by the very static pressure field that this influx induces along the pack surface. Treating massive frontal snow entrainment as a source of fluid, we show that static pressure time-histories recorded at the Vallée de la Sionne (Switzerland) conform to the classical two-dimensional Rankine half-body flow field. We calculate pore pressure within the snow cover and, from the resulting pressure gradient, find stresses on a vertical failure plane. After inferring an upper bound for snow cohesion from pressure records, we derive a sufficient condition for steady failure that sets the depth through which the cover changes from porous solid to fluidized suspension. Fluidization of the top surface imposes another relation among maximum density, internal friction and cohesion of the pack, maximum cloud size and minimum avalanche speed. Altogether, these conditions dictate which snow covers can produce powder snow avalanches. We suggest how similar “eruption currents” sustained by massive frontal entrainment may be relevant to other fluid-particle suspensions.