Föhn

Our colleague Orakel has already announced it: The südstau 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 south of it. Otherwise there will be rain and foehn winds with very high temperatures.

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.

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.

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.

The WeatherBlog can also be found on the new PowderGuide website. It's high time, after all, the season has already been heralded twice by the PowderAlert! As usual, we will dedicate ourselves to the framework story for the PA and take a look at the general weather situation. Attention: At the end there is part 1 of a tutorial series on the new PG weather.

It's getting wintry again! What we missed in the height of winter will be delivered in April: With a bit of luck, we'll get a lot more fresh snow over the next few days, especially on the eastern main ridge. And with pretty low temperatures!

The series of alerts over the last few days has noticeably improved the previously miserable snow record in the west and brought at least a small refresh in the east. Now the weather is calming down. Over the next few days, the fresh snow can be inspected more closely with high pressure, very mild temperatures and probably plenty of sunshine.

The air that currently surrounds us was over the Azores just a few days ago. You can feel connected to distant parts of the world, imagine you can smell the sea and ponder the beauty in the complexity of atmospheric movement as you glide down into the valley on Alpine artificial snow bands. You don't have to, of course, but the WeatherBlog tries to adopt a relaxed attitude in view of the turn of the year and not fret about the weather.

An air mass boundary is keeping us busy today. The cold air of the last few days is slowly giving way to warmer air masses from the south. This will lead to dangerous black ice on the roads on the northern edge of the Alps. Apart from that, the borderline weather situation will initially bring some precipitation in the north and then a change to foehn-like, milder weather.

The outlook is turbulent. On the one hand, seasonal shopping, baking cookies, vacation planning, family management and the like are on the agenda. On the other hand, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a seasonal polar vortex and what this means for our winter weather! Summary of the next few days: stormy south föhn, colder from the weekend and snow from the N-NW.

An end to the high pressure phase is not in sight. The Omega High will merely shift a little, so that the flow will turn to a more southerly direction over the next few days. This will make it warmer and slightly foehn-like, at least in the west.