Forecast

A high-pressure area over Central and Eastern Europe will dominate the Alps starting today. This will result in stable weather with plenty of sunshine. East of Salzburg, it will remain cloudy today with some snow showers, which will increasingly be confined to Lower Austria and the eastern part of Styria (Wienerwald, Mariazell and surroundings) this afternoon.

Storm Conall’s cold front has reached the Alps and snow is currently falling on the north side. On Friday, eastern Austria will be the only one to get some extra. It will then remain dry until early next week.

The very mild air has left the Alps and many regions are still waiting for their first real dump. Only the French and Swiss Alps have a reasonable base above around 2000 meters. A depression moving over the Netherlands today will cut off as an upper-level low and will be near Greece by Friday.

The Northern Alps had to deal with föhn in recent days, causing temperatures to rise sharply. Yesterday, for instance, it got as high as 17.4 degrees in Adelboden at over 1,300 metres, which was over 20 degrees warmer temperatures Friday afternoon.

We’ve had an eventful week, with the Western Alps receiving a nice base layer of snow from around 2000 meters in France and from 1500 meters in Switzerland. The Austrian Vorarlberg and the Italian Aosta also benefitted from the west-stau situations, and on Friday, a large snow front moved over Switzerland, Baden-Württemberg, and southern Bavaria.

Yesterday, Chris discussed the snowfall in detail. In the past 48 hours, it has snowed a lot higher up. All in all, these are serious amounts that will become the base for the season.

The webcams and precipitation measurements confirm this morning what the weather models had already predicted: in the French and Swiss Alps, 20 to over 60 mm of precipitation has fallen on a large scale.

We can now provide more details regarding the snow forecast for this exciting week. The main news remains that the Western Alps will receive two significant snowfalls. However, these snowfalls will start with a relatively high snow line, which means the final accumulation below 1800 meters might be disappointing, especially in France.

We have been looking forward to it for at least a week, and it is almost here: polar air and depressions are moving south and reaching the Alps. The details about snowfall, wind, and temperature will still change regularly due to the limited predictability of the cold-air depressions.

We can finally enjoy winter scenes from the Alps again. Unfortunately, this cosmetic layer will disappear below 2000 meters in the coming days due to milder air, while it will remain relatively cold in Austria for a bit longer.