Dry and sunny until the weekend, then snow for Austria?

As I said on Monday, we can be fairly brief about the weather for this week. It will be wonderful days with plenty of sunshine. In the east of Austria, it snowed until the night of Monday to Tuesday. Locally there was about 10 centimeters of snow, like above in Loser - Altaussee. We don’t have to expect fresh snow until the weekend, but early next week snow might follow from the north.

Cold night

^The forecasts on wePowder are powdered by our friends at Ortovox

The calm high-pressure conditions allow temperatures to drop considerably at night. In several places in Switzerland, it became colder than -20 degrees last night (including the Engadine, of course) and in Austria, too, we are seeing temperatures of below -15 degrees on a large scale.

High-pressure conditions

Today some clouds will pass over the Eastern Alps from the north (clearly visible on the satellite image above), but in general it will be another day with plenty of sun. Note the visible low level stratus clouds on the northern edge of the Alps and also in valleys like the Inntal. These clouds will be a little less persistent than yesterday. In many places the sun will eventually be able to break through. From tomorrow onwards, it will gradually become milder at altitude, but the dry air will have little impact on the snow cover. Steep and lower southern slopes in areas with less snow, such as Austria, may slowly but surely turn green again.

Nordstau?

The dominant high-pressure area over the Alps moves further south during the weekend, but at the same time a strong high-pressure area develops over the British Isles. It seems that this meridional high-pressure axis (see above) clears the way for a cold and moist northerly flow towards the Alps, but before the first precipitation has reached the Northern Alps it seems to go wrong.

The high-pressure area topples and the core moves eastward bit by bit, increasing the air pressure to such an extent that the snowfall from the west is quickly dampened. A day later, we already have the high pressure core of 1040 hPa directly over the Alps and we end up with dry and sunny conditions. GFS calculates on Monday and Tuesday ‘only’ 10 to 25 centimetres of snow in the stau areas east of Tirol. In the European model, the core of the strong high-pressure area on Monday is already too far east and therefore too close to the Alps for serious snowfall. A Nordstau with prolonged precipitation from the north is therefore unlikely, but a refresher with at least low temperatures and some snow for Austria is possible.