Lawinenkunde

The ski touring season is far from over for many, but with today's flurry of snow, we snow fliers are taking a break from writing and enjoying the hopefully good conditions in April and May.

The new onset of winter, which began on 14.3.21, brought a lot of fresh snow along with huge powder turns. However, this increased the risk of avalanches again. The biggest problems here were the freshly formed drift snow and the sometimes heavy amounts of fresh snow. Drift snow can usually be easily recognized in the terrain, but this problem can also prove to be treacherous, as has been the case recently.

In today's Gestöber we discuss a snow profile from January 24, 2021. The profile was dug and recorded in the Mieming, on the Simmering, on a 34° steep, SE-facing and rather snow-poor slope.

PowderGuide partner company Arva presents a modular online tool to brush up on some avalanche basics. No online offer can replace courses in the snow, but if someone wants to read up a bit, this program developed in cooperation with the French avalanche research institute ANENA (Association Nationale pour l'Étude de la Neige et des Avalanches) is a good idea.

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 addition to the constructive and degradative transformation, which have often been discussed in SnowFlurry, there is also mechanical transformation. Today we ask ourselves: What happens to snow crystals during mechanical transformation? What does the formation of drift snow have to do with it and how does it actually develop?

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.

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.

The first online ski touring summit full of information, tips and tricks for ski touring will take place in November. Host Frank Allgäuer has brought together a number of well-known faces from the scene, conducted interviews, recorded talks and extracted the best to offer a five-day online event from November 23 - 27.

The vastness of the internet is not only full of funny cat and dog videos, but often also good instructional videos on the subject of winter sports. Here is a compilation of videos about snow and avalanches, with recommendations from the snow rummager.

The melting transformation is the transformation process of the snow crystals in the snow cover, which occurs when the snow reaches a temperature of at least 0°C due to heat input. In other words, the transformation from snow crystal to water and back to ice when the temperature drops again. The corners and edges of the snow crystals begin to melt, become rounder and move closer together. The melting transformation can occur in all winter months, but is most common in spring.