Bergwetter

The WeatherBlog is back from its summer break, although summer is doing the same.

This time, Zach Paley's Las Leñas diary is all about the weather forecast: if the only thing you can rely on is that you can't rely on it, you'll just have to make up your own mind when skiing.

Winter returned with a roar over the Easter holidays. Hurricane Niklas was followed by further disturbances embedded in a strong NW current and snow and cold down to the valleys. Easter Monday seemed more like a successful St. Stephen's Day. This impression was only disturbed by the occasional rumble of thunder.

Once upon a time, a high pressure bridge over Central Europe provided stable mountain weather for days on end. Unfortunately, the wind didn't really want to play along, so the avalanche situation remained tense in many places, and annoyingly on a sunny weekend with fresh snow ...

Just in time for the meteorological start of spring, the weather is changing and the wintry weather of the last few days is being replaced by increasing high pressure.

The current weather is a good opportunity to take a closer look at the sun and its radiation. As we know, it is not only responsible for sunburn and the general living conditions on our planet, but also does one or two things to the snow.

January may have felt relatively wintry, but the statistics have no feelings. February, on the other hand, is currently spring-like in the mountains, while the lowlands are often bobbing along under a blanket of inversion-induced fog.

The woodchuck (Marmota Monax), like the well-known alpine marmot (Marmota Marmota), belongs to the genus Marmota (Marmota), tribe Marmotini (true ground squirrels), family Sciuridae (squirrels), order Rodentia (rodents). In English, Marmota Monax is called a woodchuck, which has raised the important question since time immemorial: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

The WeatherBlog apologizes for the late appearance this week, but our colleague Orakel has everything under control as usual. As he has already vaguely announced, there is a very high probability of extremely interesting weather next week.

While our colleague Orakel oracles and discusses the exciting future, this week's WeatherBlog deals with the boring past, which has recently been characterized by hurricanes, rain and cancelled freeride and Alpine World Cup events.

Accumulated precipitation, also known as orographic precipitation or precipitation on a slope, occurs when air masses hit an obstacle and are lifted by it. The air becomes colder the higher it rises and when it reaches a certain level, the water vapor it contains condenses. Small droplets or ice crystals form, which precipitate as soon as they have reached the required size.

The WeatherBlog joins the long list of annual reviews. It has been clear for some time that 2014 will go down in history as a very warm year. In Austria, there has not been a year with a higher average annual temperature since measurements began in 1768, and 2014 will most likely be the warmest year worldwide since 1880 (Austrian monks started measuring weather data earlier than many others).