Lea Hartl

The dry, very sunny weather will stay with us until Friday. The partly pronounced inversion in the valleys is creating a kind of winter feeling with cold temperatures and visibility limited by high fog (and fine dust), but in the mountains there is no sign of the cold, dark winter - according to hearsay.

The sun isn't just coming, it's already here and it's starting to get a bit boring. The WeatherBlog was looking for musical inspiration for today's issue and now can't decide whether STS or Rammstein is more suitable.

The new year begins as the old one ends: lots of sunshine, mild temperatures at high altitudes, cold in the valleys due to inversions and nocturnal radiation into the mostly starry sky. The flow will remain west to southwest and there is no significant precipitation in sight for the time being.

Every two years, the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW) brings together scientists and practitioners from a wide range of different, but always snow-related, subject areas. New findings and research results are presented in various thematic blocks - so-called sessions. We break the whole thing down into more or less digestible morsels and summarize the sessions of ISSW2018 for you every two weeks. This time: Hazard communication and perception.

A strong westerly to north-westerly flow will determine the Christmas weather in the Alpine region. This current brought a warm front yesterday (Tuesday), followed by a cold front today. While the lowlands and lower valleys will be quite wet, considerable amounts of fresh snow will fall at higher altitudes.

My grandmother, who learned to drive in the 1950s, still raves about the chic gloves that people wore when driving back then - white leather gloves on the leather steering wheel, that was simply stylish, apparently.

The current southerly foehn conditions are almost creating a summer feeling, especially in western Austria and parts of Switzerland: in Feldkirch (Vorarlberg), 20°C were measured at 3 a.m. on Tuesday, and temperatures were also close to the 20° mark at some other stations on Tuesday morning.

A strong westerly flow will bring fronts and intermediate highs in rapid alternation. For the most part, it will remain too warm for the lowlands, but there will be more snow at higher altitudes. The western Alps are favored, in the east there will only be grazing snow.

Mountain glaciers and the seasonal snow cover play an important role in the local and regional water balance. When they change, the hydrological conditions also change - not only in the direct catchment areas, but possibly also far downstream. What exactly does this mean and what are the consequences, apart from "it's bad for the ski resorts" and "it looks stupid"?

High pressure determines the weather in the Alpine region. A high pressure system is currently arching over Central Europe with a simultaneous low pressure influence in the south. Over the next few days, the high will flatten out and the large-scale flow will become more zonal. If the whole thing were a little further south, we would have "western Alpine weather", but as the frontal zone is quite far to the north, we will remain under high pressure for the time being.

While the southern side of the Alps can already boast a more than decent base, the north is still struggling for the most part, especially at lower altitudes. It has recently been warm on both sides of the main ridge - in the south with rain up to high altitudes, in the north with snow-eating Föhn winds and in the center with gale-force winds. A change in the general weather situation is now bringing change.

After our colleague Orakel has already reported four times, it's high time for the WeatherBlog to return from its summer slumber. We are starting the season with a classic overview of the very interesting general weather situation: