The golden autumn is back in the Alps. After a relatively snowy October, with even a snowfall in most of the valleys on October 26th and 27th, a nice base was already building up at altitude. In the coming days it will mainly be enjoying the colorful autumn pictures, because after a look at the maps, the weather in the Alps also seems to be participating in NOvember for the time being. In the coming week there will be a high-pressure area above Central Europe, which means that there is no precipitation in the forecast.
No snow anymore on south faces
A persistent layer of stratus clouds dominated the weather on the north side of the Alps (see satellite image above) yesterday. This layer of clouds between 1500 and 2000 meters altitude brought for a gray day in the valleys, but above the clouds it was sunny. Check out the picture below from the Axamer Lizum near Innsbruck.
If we look at the other webcams, we still see snowy north faces, but the warm weather on the unsheltered slopes in the past week has already left its mark. There is hardly any snow on the southern faces up to 2500 meters. Even though the melting goes a lot slower with the weak autumn sun, the base will slowly but surely be further affected by the high temperatures in the coming days. The freezing level will again rise to well above 3000 meters in the coming days.
Clouds from the southwest
^The forecasts on wePowder are powdered by our friends at Ortovox
The low-pressure area off the coast of the Iberian peninsula will remain more or less in place for the next two days, bringing the Alps back into warm weather due to a southwestern high current. Today it remains mostly sunny, with only some low-hanging clouds in the Piedmont and the pre-Alps. In the course of tomorrow morning, clouds will reach the French Alps from the southwest. The Eastern Alps will hardly notice this, it remains sunny here. In addition to the clouds, there may also be some precipitation in the Western Alps, but we should be happy when about 2 to 3 centimeters will come down with a snow line around 2500 meters. So nothing worth mentioning. In the Pyrenees, on the other hand, there is plenty of precipitation on Saturday, but with a snow line of about 2700 meters.
Inversion weather
Stable high-pressure weather dominates in the Alps from Sunday. The typical descending air movements in a high-pressure area cause the upper air to warm up, while close to the earth’s surface the low sun in combination with the absence of wind causes little warming. Due to these processes we may have to deal with subsidy inversion in the coming days. While in the high alpine there doesn’t seem to be a cloud in the sky, in the valleys there is a stubborn stratus cloud cover that sometimes does not dissolve until late in the afternoon or even does not dissolve at all.
In short, we still have to be patient before winter starts. After all, it is still autumn and that also includes stable high-pressure periods. There may be some precipitation by the end of next week, but that is too far ahead at this point to be able to say anything meaningful about it.