However reduction of an avalanche to a quanfifiable experiment in lab conditions meets the infinite number of variables and variations caused by the land shape alone, as no two slopes are alike. Lab and computer simulations identified many of the unseen physics within an avalanche cloud, but variations of terrain in the wild amplify, diminish and steer inertia. The truism of no two snowflakes alike exists with no two avalanches alike. Even avalanches that occur several times a year on the same slope.

Where the study is more useful is in construction of infrastructure to protect electrical and communications towers, and even private property to some degree.

In the devastating 2018-19 winter, one colossol avalanche ran for four miles in the Snowmass Creek drainage near Aspen. It wiped out everything, forest, houses... except one house whose owner build an uphill retaining wall in the shape of a ship's bow, that split the avalanche, steering it to one side or the other of his house.

Another true thing about avalanches is you must go out of your way to get in their way. Like skiing in the back country below known avalanche chutes after a storm has loaded the slope with a large cornice and slabs of hard, windpacked snow ready to split apart and slide like the felon walking on a floor covered with marbles.