Yes, it’s looking pretty far ahead and so with a beat, but at the moment we do have to look at the medium to long term for a serious pack of fresh snow. Sure, Monday will bring some snow and is a nice refresher, but no large amounts. Towards the end of the week it possibly will, with increasingly changeable (and windy!) conditions. The southern Alps currently seem the biggest contenders for a snow dump, but don’t take these amounts above too literally just yet.
Very warm
The past few days have been very warm again in the Alps, with a Tmax of 18.8 degrees here in Innsbruck yesterday (Friday), for example. As a sidenote, it was also particularly warm around this time last year with up to 21.7 degrees here in Innsbruck on the 18th of February. These are one of many signs that the general trend is worrying, but at the same time we should definitely not write off this winter because of this. Especially with the nuance that snow cover above 2000 metres is still average or even above average. For the lower regions, on the other hand, it is a tough time.
So too with today’s precipitation, as typical of recent times is also today’s (Saturday) snowfall. With a tail of the cold front, the Northern Alps got some precipitation, but it remains just far too warm. The snowline is mostly at around 1800 to 2000 metres and in the valleys the temperature is around or above 10 degrees. So absolutely no typical February weather.
Monday does see a slightly better cooling and some snow. The snowline then drops from over 1500 metres to around 1200-1300 metres. From the Berner Oberland to the Dachstein massif, a good 10-20 centimetres of freshening snow may fall in the Nordstau areas, inneralpine some less. On Tuesday it clears from the west, Austria (especially the eastern areas) will be in the northwest flow for a bit longer with some snow showers.
Temporarily milder again, but a potentially stormy and snowy end of the week
From Wednesday, the northern and western Alps in particular will temporarily return to a slightly milder phase. This coincides with the transition to a weather type with more depression activity on the Atlantic Ocean due to a strong jet stream.
Small changes in this strong jet stream can make a big difference in the final impact for the Alps. The models are now increasingly leaning towards heavy snowfall in the southern Alps around the weekend of 24 and 25 February, but France and Austria will also benefit. Parts of Switzerland and Austria may keep it dry a bit longer with the (possibly heavy) southföhn on Thursday/Friday. In several calculations over the past few days, the southern Alps could get a metre of snow locally, but as mentioned, this is still very uncertain. Moreover, this will mainly be at higher altitudes, as it does not seem to get really cold at first. We will keep an eye on it! Next update on Monday!