Weblog

After a long period of relatively mild and dry weather, a surge of polar air will finaly descend into the Alps at the very end of the season. In addition, we will be dealing with frontal precipitation and showers moving in from the north and west.

In the Alps, it took quite a while this season before the snowpack really started to build. In the Rockies — and especially in Colorado — that moment simply never came. In this post, a brief look at just how dramatic this season has been there, along with a reference to the American podcast Where to Ski , where we were recently invited to talk about it.

An impressive low‑pressure system moved from Algeria to central Italy over the past 24 hours and is pushing mild, moist air toward the Alps. This air mass also contains Saharan dust, which may be deposited onto the snowpack during rain and snowfall.

After the Easter holidays, the weather in the Alps has so far been fairly mild, with temperatures in many valleys rising above 20°C and no significant snowfall. However, things are about to change again in the coming days.

For the time being, there is no sign of significant snowfall, but the stabilisation now setting in will bring excellent ski touring conditions over the coming week. The dumps of recent weeks have also laid down a solid base for freeriding in the high alpine.

What a fantastic week we’ve had! Two Powder Alerts in quick succession and the snowiest period of the season in the Northern Alps. Temperatures also stayed at midwinter levels. Today we take stock and look ahead to the Easter weekend.

In this short update we zoom in on the snowfall from this PowderAlert. How much has already fallen, what’s still to come—and when will the sun break through? Yesterday morning the front of PA#13 reached the Swiss Alps.

Coen already clearly explained yesterday what we can expect this week. After a solid PowderAlert 12, it’s now time for PowderAlert 13, once again bringing snow from the north. Weather maps at around 5 km altitude for Monday (left) and Tuesday (right) (wxcharts) The snowfall is made possible by a well-defined upper-level trough (the wave with green/blue colors) visible on the map above.

In case you missed it: PowderAlert 12 was an absolute banger, delivering over a meter of deep powder across parts of Switzerland and Austria. If you haven’t seen the footage yet, make sure to check it out here.

Over the past few days it was finally on for the Northern Alps. A serious Nordstau delivered large amounts of snow, with the core over Austria and Switzerland. At several Austrian stations, the deepest snowpack of this winter so far was recorded.