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PowderAlert 1 2016/17 | Time to dust up

Ski cleaning is possible everywhere, skiing possibly in France

by Lars Oelmann • 11/04/2016
Hype! #EightMeterSnow! Um...or maybe not. At least it's starting to snow. If you only read the first line of the teaser: Sorry Internet 3.0. No, not eight meters of snow, just the first sign of winter coming our way.

It has started to snow. Mainly in the west, south and south-east, but only in the west is the snow line low enough to be fun at the moment.

One thing first

I don't think it will be enough for powder anywhere, but you might be able to slide around a bit nicer on the glaciers in the west or south-east. Why am I writing this here? Well, it will definitely be enough to form a base here and there, on which you might be able to do something next weekend, if supplies arrive.

The snow line is currently above 2000m and will soon drop to lower altitudes down to 1000m. With this drop, however, the precipitation will also decrease and we will have the dilemma of early winter. There is some snow at the top, but lots of large stones and crevasses. Meadow below, but only cosmetic. The snowfall zone will gradually cover the whole of the Alps, but most of it will probably be in the west, south and south-east.

Therefore, I advise you to dust off your skis and just enjoy the white icing visually.

If anyone really wants to know,

and since the criteria for this alarm are 30cm in 24h or less, here are the amounts:

Above 2500m, around 15-30cm will fall today and tomorrow throughout the Alps. In the core areas of the west, the Adamello/Upper Engadine, in France and the French-Swiss border area/North Valais possibly also 40-60cm.

It is also possible that 70-80cm will come around in a waterlogged area in France. In the southeast in the border triangle of Carinthia, Italy and Slovenia, the models see significantly more, but it stays warm there for longer, so I don't think it will be possible to measure it anywhere and it will only come down in liquid form because the mountains are too low. With the warm soils, I would also assume that it is much more compact than really powdery, which doesn't have to be a bad thing if you want to ski on stones and grass ;)

Cumulative amounts of fresh snow in the Western Alps until Sunday

Cumulative amounts of fresh snow in the Western Alps until Sunday

Cumulative amounts of fresh snow in the Western Alps until Sunday

Medium-term

Ullr won't be grabbing the Alps by the throat with an Arctic hand, but there's no November summer in the cards either. Will there be a mobile alarm next weekend? Who knows... So dust off your skis and Ullr shrines, make sacrifices to your favorite god (besides the spaghetti monster) and be happy that the PowderAlert is back.

P.S. I wouldn't want to start the prediction game until the first "real" alert that you can ride.

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