Lea Hartl

Before we head towards the Christmas snow, let's take a look at the large-scale pressure patterns that spin over the world's oceans and control our weather: The polar vortex currently has two distinct cold poles. One lies over eastern Siberia and the North Pacific. The other extends roughly from Newfoundland via Greenland to the Barents Sea and is responsible for a strong westerly current over the Atlantic, which has been bringing us "new weather" every few days for a while now.

As we all know, the WetterBlog likes when things are happening in the weather kitchen and suffers from acute boredom bordering on anxiety if the weather stays the same for too long. We are therefore pleasedto announce: Something is happening! The next few days offer (almost) everything that Alpine weather can do.

After the respectable onset of winter last week, things are now continuing rather cautiously. A cold front reaches the northern Alps on Thursday and brings a few centimetres of fresh snow. High pressure returns at the weekend. This weather blog is a joint effort by Sebastian and Lea!

The WeatherBlog is taking a summer break, unless there's another onset of winter with corresponding blog inspiration in between. Over the next few days, the south-west will be in full swing again - there would probably be a PowderAlert if our oracle wasn't already in summer mode.

The weather can be summarised as follows at the moment: Before the summer is after the summer is before the summer and sometimes it snows. At the moment we're in a "it's snowing again" phase. Tomorrow summer will return.

Foehn storms in the north, metres of fresh snow at (very) high altitudes in the south, record temperatures followed by a sharp drop in temperature with a cold front: the last few days have been quite something. The weather has now calmed down somewhat. The next, much weaker southerly foehn is on the horizon for the weekend, probably with summer heat and no precipitation.

The PowderAlert already announced it: The southerly flow is back and the next few days will be turbulent. The traditional Easter snowfall will only fall as snow at very high altitudes on the main ridge and in the south. Otherwise there will be rain and foehn winds with very high temperatures.

The large family of Mammut Alugator shovels now includes different style lengths, handle shapes and shovel blade variations for different needs and preferences. The Alugator Ultra is the lightest shovel in the range and promises stability and durability with minimum weight.

The series of southerly storms seems to be over for the time being and the medium term looks like (south)westerly weather. Otherwise, we have various "Miscellaneous" blog items this time.

The mean temperature for February this year corresponds to a warmer than average March. In all Alpine countries, February was much warmer than usual and records were broken in many cases. The statistical winter (December, January, February) was also one of the warmest on record. Of course, the skiing winter is not over yet, and there will be more to come in the south at the weekend.

Last week's pattern is set to repeat itself: After a brief interlude of high pressure on Thursday, the southern flow will return with föhn in the north and wet weather in the south. Winter at altitude will continue and the mild, slushy spring at lower elevations will too.

Winter made a brief appearance in the south last week, as the latest ConditionReports show. CRs from the north, on the other hand, indicate that the snow is becoming less, at least regionally. According to Salta's CR from 10 February, "Great cloud scenery and very pleasant slush snow" are highlights of recent touring days in the northern Alps. Jacobanselm even found a small layer of powder on 13 February and "only" south-facing sharks.