Lea Hartl

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.

The westerly weather that seems to have lasted forever will come to an end over the next few days. At the weekend, we can expect accumulating precipitation in the south and foehn in the north. The outlook after that is still hazy, but at least more interesting than recently.

Among meteorologists, subjective judgements such as "good" or "bad" weather are frowned upon. It's not appropriate to make such judgements; you should remain professional and neutral in any weather situation. Nevertheless, there are of course personal preferences that we can't always hide. Professionally, we tend to be enthusiastic about unusual, extreme or otherwise exciting situations that are often anything but "beautiful". Conversely, classically "nice" weather tends to be boring, especially if it lasts for weeks on end.

Atomic is focusing on clearer specialisation of the individual ski series in the freeride sector for 2024/25. Gone are the days of the One Ski Quiver, clear differentiation is back in! The Bent series is aimed at backcountry freestylers, Maverick and Maven are designed for big lines in Alaska and the Backland series comes along on "missions" and downhill-orientated ski tours. The details of familiar models have been optimised and a few new variants have been added.

Over the last few days, the weather change has been slowly approaching, but now it's here. A succession of fronts will bring stormy, mild conditions with fresh snow (see PowderAlert) at high altitudes before things are expected to calm down again during the weekend.