When will it snow again?

After a very sunny and dry week, the desire for another large snow dump is growing. When will it finally happen again? At least until the middle of next week, we don’t have to expect large amounts. After that, it looks like the changeability will increase, but the the weather models are at the moment not sure what will exactly happen.

Some snow today

In a large part of the Alps it will be sunny again today, but a upper-level trough to the east of the Alps will bring increasing cloudiness in the east of Austria and later in the afternoon and evening also some centimetres of snow in the Southern Alps. Especially the areas at the southern edge of the Alps, Piemonte and the Alpes-Maritimes will receive a few centimetres of snow with a snowline that will drop below 1000 metres. I don’t expect more than 10 centimetres of snow. On Saturday the Alpes-Maritimes might get some more snow, but for the rest of the weekend in the Alps it will be dry and sunny again.

Continental flow

In the coming period, the Alps will be mainly affected by a dry and cold continental flow from the northeast. Temperatures will be a few degrees below average, which is fine for the beginning of March, but we should not expect much snow with this dry northeast wind.

The cold will reach its peak on Monday, with possible temperatures of around -10 degrees on the Austrian north side. In the night from Sunday to Monday another upper-level trough will pass from north to south east of Austria, which will make sure it will snow 2 to 5 centimetres in Austria first and then, because of the northeastern high flow, also in Piemonte during Tuesday.

More snow at the end of next week?

Towards the end of the week, more cold may be transported to the Alps, but a strong depression over the Atlantic Ocean will at the same time bring in a good portion of warm air from the southwest. So, there could be a huge temperature difference of over 15 degrees in the upper air between the French Alps (quite mild) and the Eastern Alps (quite cold) with quite some potential on a nice layer of snow. We are only talking about a weather situation in exactly one week. There is already some delay in it and with small shifts it can still go either way, which depends entirely on the development and course of this depression over the Atlantic and the constancy of the high pressure area over Northeast Europe. The weather models do not yet agree at all and do not yet give an unambiguous picture. At the moment, it does not look like it will be the real dump that we so much hope for.