Lukas Ruetz

Avalanche warning services, the media, numerous avalanche accidents and the first avalanche victims of the season in Salzburg have all issued impressive warnings about the current snowpack build-up over the last few days. We take a look at a current snow profile from Sölden in Ötztal.

Arnold Studeregger is part of the avalanche warning service at ZAMG in Styria. We spoke to him about the development of the Styrian LWD, the biggest innovations and his favorite snow profile

A recent find on the Internet: "No winter without old snow problems - that's annoying!" We take a more nuanced view of this statement and put it into perspective: How is an old snow problem defined, what exactly does it look like at the moment and are all old snow problems a big problem for us?

Over the last few days, the media has repeatedly reported on collapsed roofs in the snowy regions south of the main Alpine ridge. How much snow load must a roof actually be able to withstand and how many kilograms of snow are currently on Austria's roofs?

While there was a precarious situation in the northern Alps a week ago with numerous spontaneous avalanches, you hardly ever see fresh avalanches that come off on their own anymore. Weak layers and snow slabs often quickly change their characteristics for the better - we compare two profiles that were recorded nearby during the situation and a week later.

Rudi Mair from the LWD Tyrol is working as an avalanche forecaster for the 31st winter this year. The eloquent "avalanche expert", who is also well known in the less snow-loving part of society, talks about the development of the Tyrolean avalanche warning service, the biggest innovations of the last thirty years and whether he would return to his professional origins in the Antarctic in retirement.

In South Tyrol, East Tyrol and Upper Carinthia, there are currently some easily triggerable weak layers in the snowpack at certain altitudes and exposures. We take a look at two current profiles from East Tyrol.

The Working Group of Austrian Avalanche Warning Services has published its seasonal report for winter 2019/20. The report not only contains statistical evaluations of the past avalanche winter, but also many detailed and impressively illustrated analyses of specific accidental avalanches. In addition to the LWDs of the Austrian federal states, the SLF and the LWD South Tyrol are also represented with guest contributions.

On December 15, a medium-sized slab avalanche was triggered on the Pirchkogel in the Stubai Alps. No one involved came to any harm. The skiers hit an area with a thin layer of fresh snow and were thus able to initiate the break, which ultimately spread over a large area in the weak layer.

Roughly speaking, there is now an accident-prone old snow problem in Tyrol, especially north of the Inn, as the weaker snowfall means that there is now a perfect slab above the weak layers. Further south, however, the weak layers have not disappeared, but there are far fewer places where slab avalanches can be triggered due to the thicker layers.

Avalanche warning services, PowderAlert and WeatherBlog have intensively discussed the current situation regarding the intensive new snowfall in the south and the build-up of old snow cover. That's why we're devoting ourselves here to an exemplary snow profile from mid-November. How do you read it and how do you interpret it?

The marmot greets us daily with sunshine and a mostly cloudless sky. Especially near the surface, there is a massive temperature gradient of just a few centimetres in the snow cover - often despite plus temperatures up to high altitudes.