Humid air is arriving in the southern French Alps from the southwest. It was a sunny day yesterday, but it looks quite different today. High clouds are coming in from the Mediterranean and that results in grey skies.
One look at the radar and you know it all. Precipitation is on its way and the next 24 hours this will result in rain and snowfall in the southwest stau areas. But… it will only come down as snow above 2500 meters.
The precipitation is also visible on the snow maps. The French southern Alps will get some snow on its highest peaks the next 36 hours. You can see that resorts like Isola 2000, Vars/Risoul and the Serre Chevalier will get some snow.
But the temperatures will be too high to ski some powder around the Col Agnel, like Sandra from wePowder.fr did a while ago.
The temperatures will rise rapidly the next 36 hours and this won’t be different next week. The jetstream is situated north of the Alps and the result is that the Alps have to deal with warm air. Fortunately the nights are clear and this will preserve the snow on north faces. But clear nights also result in the coming into being of hoar. If you follow Mountain Academy you can learn this isn’t positive, because this sugar snow isn’t the best base with the next dump. The wind has been pretty strong last week as well. If you have a look ath the picture below that was shot around Tignes, you can see some wind signs, but also a large slab avalanche.
We might just be at the start of the winter, but already nine people are killed by avalanches already. It’s the worst start of the winter in years.
Snow on its way?
The high-pressure blockage that I have been talking about yesterday will stick around for a while. The high pressure area will move south a bit, but this doesn’t mean that we’re going to deal with cold air. There will be some precipitation in Austria this weekend, but it will be time for high pressure again right after. This will be the case till the second week of November. But something special is about to happen at the end of that week. What? I’ll tell you more tomorrow.
Where can you find King Winter?
Japan had its first amount of freshies last week, but currently has to deal with warm air. The current will turn west to northwest during the weekend and there might be a chance that the highest peaks in Hokkaido will get some fresh snow. It even gets better in North America!
PowderAlert!
We launched the first PowderAlert for the US and Canada yesterday. Canada already got a lot of snow last week and the front hit the Cascades (Mt. Baker and around), Idaho and Wyoming and moved to the south. Tahoe finally received some precipitation and Boreal Mountain is even opening its lifts on Friday.
We saw some great footage of Chris Rubens earlier and we’ll probably see more footage coming in the next 72 hours. Especially in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado (both the south and the north) they’ll get another 30-50 centimeters of snow and the north Canada and the Cascades will also get some snow.
After Snowtober in Europe it’s time for Snowvember in North America. Check out the North American snow maps. Are you jealous? More about the weather in Europe tomorrow!
Stay stoked
Morris