A short update today. The outline of the weather forecast on Thursday is still going strong. Around 10-20 cm of freshies came down in eastern Austria on Wednesday. Locally even up to 30 cm. Certainly not super deep, but hey, it’s something. And let’s be honest… a face like this with freshies at Hochkar is pretty tempting right?
The other option was to go touring. Especially in the northern Alps you could still find some freshies. They had snow a week ago and the northern faces were still pretty good.
Meanwhile the snow maps for PA #18 are getting clear. Please checkWednesday’s forecast before you read on. After that it’s time for some finetuning. There was around 48-hours between the forecast on Wednesday and the one on today, and that’s pretty good, because the models could move back and forth a bit to determine their positions on the maps. GFS popped all over and that was pretty awesome to see (weather geek mode on). WRF and ECMWF weren’t that rowdy and their output was more stable. The 200 cm are locally still possible, because all the ingredients come together. As said, low pressure, temporarily very cold air in the upper current, an easterly current, the orography of the Po-Valley and the proximity of the Mediterranean.
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It starts snowing in the French southern Alps and the Piemonte in the night from Friday to Saturday.
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A Genoa-low will form
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Intense snowfall in the complete Italian Piemonte on Sunday
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It will be deep from Sunday afternoon / evening
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Deep treeruns in the Piemonte from Monday
PA#18 where to go?
Cold and unstable air arrive in the night from Friday to Saturday from the northwest and this results in the first snowfall in the French southern Alps and Piedmont. It will keep snowing on Saturday and the big bang will follow in the Piedmont on Sunday. The entire Piedmont and the Swiss region of Ticino will get hammered. Striking is the low snow line which continuously sits between 800 and 1200 meters and could locally be even lower.
You can expect about 40-90 centimeters of freshies on average in the Piedmont, but in the (south)easternstau regions of the Mont Viso, Gran Paradiso and Monte Rosa it could even be 120-150 cm. And that in only 48 hours.
The weather will calm down in the western Piedmont on Monday and the front moved further to the east. There are still chances for snow around the Monte Rosa, but especially in Trentino, Lombardy and the Dolomites it will snow heavily. It will continue to snow till Wednesday and after that high temperatures might kick in. We’ll see what happens. Right now, the short term is important. The PowderAlert is ON for:
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Southern Alps Central (everything west of Airolo)
I also expect quite a lot of snow in the border regions with France (such as Isola 2000, Valfrejus etc …), but for the real tree runs between the larches you should be in the regions above. Click on it, pick an area and make sure that you are there on Sunday. From Sunday to Tuesday, it’s ON over there. Have fun and I might run into you in one of those larch forests. I’m the guy with the big smile ;)
Stay stoked
Morris