Lea Hartl

The WeatherBlog is tired from skiing, so this week just a bit of framing for the PowderAlert

PowderGuide über-user Tobi asks: how do such pronounced southern winters or, last winter, northern winters come about? I'm aware that there is a certain tendency to preserve the snow. But the fact that it always turns out to be as extreme as this winter is astonishing.

The northern congestion was short-lived and we fall back into a south-westerly situation that is quite impressive: While there are warnings of heavy snowfall and high to very high avalanche danger on the southern slopes of the Alps, the north can expect a mild foehn.

A strong Azores high will bring a northerly flow to the Alpine region. This will bring wintry temperatures and precipitation. Where exactly the latter will end up is still somewhat uncertain.

"On Sunday (refers to the week before last [5.1.14]) it snowed wet in the south, in some places up to over 2000 m, and after a starry night, dry powder was also to be found much lower down on Monday. (...) I've been thinking about a build-up transformation of the wet fresh snow. Is that conceivable?"

The general weather situation and the associated weather remains unchanged, at least for the time being. A change is in the offing at the beginning of next week. What exactly it will bring, however, is uncertain.

The weather is not interested in the turn of the year and continues as before. The next accumulation of precipitation is due in the south, while the drought continues in the north.

The WeatherBlog was inspired by the ski instructor today and is in a bad mood, so just a brief overview:

The permanent high that has accompanied us for so long is increasingly weakening, while a powerful low near Iceland is becoming stronger and stronger, bringing very stormy holidays to parts of northern Europe. Between this Atlantic low and the remnants of the high over the continent, the Alps are caught in a south-westerly flow that brings mild, sometimes damp weather.

A German version of the weather book by French meteorologists Jean-Jacques Thillet and Dominique Schueller has been published in the "Wissen & Praxis" series by Rother Verlag.

PG-Conditions reporter KarlNickel asks: "I assume (the forecasting uncertainty) is mainly due to the large amount of data and parameters that are difficult to calculate? I would be interested to know ... whether it will be possible to make reliable 7-day forecasts in about 10 years' time."

PG reader Randy-Random obviously has some catching up to do when it comes to polar vortex splits, and a revision lesson at the beginning of the year was always a good idea at school, so we'll confidently leave the fuss about individual snowflakes on individual mountains to our colleague Oracle and look at the bigger picture again.