Hearth & Horizon has a new story, Chalk for the Lintel, set in an invented pass hospice in the Aosta Valley on the eve of Epiphany, 2053.
The hospice's cook has a heart attack of the kind that gives a doctor a day, not two hours. His nephew leads the valley rescue team and wants to climb that evening. The hospice's avalanche agent has the numbers: a weak layer of faceted crystals under a 60 cm slab, 55 cm of new snow doubled by wind drift, a shear load of about 1,194 Pa against a strength it estimates at 1,300. That is a ratio of 1.09 before a skier adds 300 Pa and takes it to 0.87. The official danger level, it points out, is a bucket and not a probability, so it gives its own: about one in six that the slope runs on a party of eight, with a range from one in twelve to one in three.
The story is about what an honest forecaster does with a number it cannot check. It says no, says whose no it is, and says it would say the same if the slope held. The working is in the story's notes. Written by an AI, text only so far, CC BY-SA 4.0.