Monday is a powder day, then rapidly milder

Best weekend so far? Will, it seems so. In my forecast for Wednesday I already mentioned where to go this weekend and in my video forecast for Friday I spelled it out for you. Anyone who has followed my directions for the ideal powderchase has probably had the best weekend so far this season. And there is some extra on Monday to top it off. Some cold snow will follow on Monday, followed by a warm front on Tuesday. Warm on cold snow in short with a rapidly rising temperature. Wednesday and Thursday become sunny and mild, after which a new front appears on Friday. In this article:

• A wonderful weekend
• Cold front on Monday
• Warm front on Tuesday
• Wednesday and Thursday mild and sunny
• Friday a new front
• The chase: where to go?

A wonderful weekend

What a weekend! Superb powder, wonderful lines and the sun that came through more and more often. The reports speak for themselves. Better some moving images than words to explain the happiness of this weekend.

Today (Sunday), milde air flows into the Alps from the west with a lot of sun.

Cold front on Monday

A new cold front flows into the Alps on Monday. In the northwest and later also north of the Alps, this produces 5-15, locally up to 30 cm of cold snow. The snow line drops to 800-1200 meters and due to the bad weather above the tree line it will be a treeruns day in the northwest again.

Below you will find the snow forecast map for Monday according to the wePowder model. Which, by the way, I find a little too positive. I think the quantities overall will be a few centimeters less.

You ride the best treeruns around Mont Blanc, in western Wallis and the Bernese Oberland on Monday morning. In the east of Switzerland and the Austrian Vorarlberg, the front arrives in the afternoon so that it may take a while until the old tracks are covered again.

Warm front on Tuesday

A warm front enters the Alps on Tuesday. In the morning it is still cold and the powder fluffy, but in the course of the day milder air enters the Alps from the west. The associated heat front brings precipitation and pushes up the snow line.

The snow line goes from the west then quickly from the 1000 meters mark to 1700 meters and later even to 2200 meters. In Eastern Switzerland and the west of Austria it takes a little longer before the warm air arrives, but here too the snow line goes towards the 1700 meters with peaks in the pre-Alps towards the 2200 meters. In the inneralpine valleys it stays cold for a long time and the snow line is therefore much lower. It is difficult to estimate when the snow line will rise here and that will vary from valley to valley.

I expect Tuesday about 10-20 cm above the 2000 meters for the northwestern Alps and locally 30-40 cm above the 2400 meters. This heat front contains much more moisture and in combination with the cold air it will bring more snow than the wepowder model calculates. But only in the higher elevations. Lower down we will see rain.

Mild and sunny on Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday and Thursday the Alps are under the temporary influence of high pressure. Very mild air flows into the Alps from the southwest, but luckily it is dry, sunny and certainly inneralpine cloudless. The air is quite dry there so that the snow on shady northern slopes remains of a particularly good quality. On slopes that do get sun, snow quality, on the other hand, is rapidly declining.

But those who think carefully will ride wonderful lines on northern slopes on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Watch out for the warming up during the day and think about what is above you. Wet snow avalanches are going to be an issue on both days when it will be +17 degrees in the valleys.

Friday a new front

A new cold front follows on Friday. The impact of this is still difficult to determine. More about that later this week.

The chase: where to go?

• Monday morning: enough fresh snow for treeruns in the French Northern Alps, western Switzerland
• Monday afternoon: now deep enough in Eastern Switzerland and Vorarlberg
• Tuesday morning: it gets milder, so get up early
• Tuesday afternoon: a little cooler in the east, already raining in the west
• Wednesday and Thursday: northern slopes above 2000 meters in the northwest of the Alps

I travel a lot these days and don’t check online much. If you have urgens questions, ask them via my insta or facebook pages, I get the best notifications from them. I will do my best to answer asap.

Your Powfinder, Morris