Glatteis

After around two weeks of fairly low temperatures, it will become milder again over the next few days. The cold air masses that have migrated to us from Arctic latitudes have moved eastwards and the high-altitude current is turning to westerly to south-westerly directions. After fresh snow in the north followed by considerable icy weather, the medium-term signs are now pointing to Föhn and südstau.

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.

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.

We don't have much to add to the oracle and his current rain alarm today. The weather in the Alpine region is not particularly pleasant, although the temperatures are certainly spectacular. From Thursday afternoon it will be less wet, but even warmer. The weather is expected to cool down at the beginning of next week.

We take a look at where January 2017 ranks in the climate statistics and then consider the current situation and further developments in February: a long phase of cold, dry weather is followed by mild, foehn-like conditions in the north and fairly widespread precipitation in the parched south. It remains to be seen whether this change will last or whether we will soon return to familiar patterns.