The last 24 hours twe have seen gale-strength westerly to northwesterly winds, 10-30 cm of snowfall above 2000-2400 meters, rain and rising temperatures. The next 24 hours temperatures will go up before a powerful cold front will reach the Alps on Sunday. Stormy westerly to northwesterly winds will persist at high altitude and snowlevels are expected to drop to 1500 meters and further.
The avalanche situation in Tirol is critical. The perils are considerable far and wide, regionally the danger level is high. Above approximately 2400m freshly formed snowdrift accumulations have formed and will ongoingly accumulate during the course of the day. These drifted masses are highly prone to triggering and can release as avalanches even by minimum additional loading. Remotely and naturally triggered slab avalanches are possible. (source)
Avalanche Centers in Austria warn us for a crotical situation and therefor they urgently advise the inexperienced not to leave the secured ski runs!
Think twice!
We’ve been saying this for two weeks already and probably the impact of the message starts to erode. But here we go again. There were already 19 fatalities due to avalanches this winter until now. As many as eleven of them occurred last week. If you go off piste, always wear an avalanche transceiver, shovel and probe with you. In addition, make sure you know your local avalanche bulletin and adapt your plans to it. Think twice before you follow other tracks and not just dive into a run because others are doing it as well.
The weight of a single skier or boarder is enough to disturb the balance in the snow cover and let avalanches rage down. Today even large spontaneous avalanches are possible. Off-piste thus requires a lot of knowledge in the coming days. If you don’t have the right knowledge or if you do not trust your own decisions because you lack sufficient knowledge, hire a ski and mountain guide, or stay on the slopes!