Lawinenwarnung

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.

The Working Group of Austrian Avalanche Warning Services has published its seasonal report for winter 2019/20. The report not only contains statistical evaluations of the past avalanche winter, but also many detailed and impressively illustrated analyses of specific accidental avalanches. In addition to the LWDs of the Austrian federal states, the SLF and the LWD South Tyrol are also represented with guest contributions.

The SLF issued its first avalanche bulletin on December 21, 1945. Since then, avalanche risk forecasting has developed significantly. However, despite all the technical advances, specialist knowledge and the assessment of experts are still required today.

The Swiss Avalanche Bulletin is entering its 75th season! Congratulations and thank you for the great service! To mark the anniversary, PowderGuide.com (as well as the SLF homepage) will be publishing various articles about the work of the SLF over the next few weeks.

The Avalanche Warning Service Tyrol offers its newsletter function via various channels. It's best to register now to stay up to date! The daily avalanche report is standard reading every evening to determine the next destination in the snow and to carry out appropriate risk management on site.

The Initiative for a Uniform Avalanche Forecast throughout the Alps - IFALP - would like to see situation reports no longer stop at national borders. PG columnist Lukas Ruetz is committed to IFALP and we took the opportunity to find out more about how IFALP came about and what the initiators want for the future of avalanche warning in the Alps. An interview by Eliane Droemer:

Every two years, the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW) brings together scientists and practitioners from a wide range of different, but always snow-related, subject areas. New findings and research results are presented in various thematic blocks - so-called sessions. We break the whole thing down into more or less digestible morsels and summarize the sessions of the ISSW2018 for you every two weeks.

The Working Group of Austrian Avalanche Warning Services has published its seasonal report for winter 2018/19. As always, the report not only contains statistical evaluations of the past avalanche winter, but also many detailed and impressively illustrated analyses of specific accidental avalanches. In addition to the LWDs of the Austrian federal states, the SLF and the LWD South Tyrol are also represented with guest contributions.

As of December 7, 2019, the newsletter of Lawinen.report has to be discontinued due to a change in the terms of use of the Facebook subsidiary. But there are alternatives to stay up to date!

...and the occasional bit of north-westerly congestion. That more or less sums up the current outlook. As you can read in the never-ending PowderAlert series, it's still snowing in the northern Alps for the time being.

Since the 2018/19 season, there has been a joint avalanche forecast for the Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino European region for the first time. Cross-border, multilingual, standardized. A worldwide novelty. In the background, several years were spent working on the perfect implementation. We spoke to the two tireless project supervisors Norbert Lanzanasto and Christoph Mitterer from the Tyrol Avalanche Warning Service about the background to the Euregio Avalanche Report.

The Working Group of Austrian Avalanche Warning Services has published its seasonal report for winter 2017/18. As always, the report not only contains statistical evaluations of the past avalanche winter, but also many detailed and impressively illustrated analyses of specific accidental avalanches. In addition to the LWDs of the Austrian federal states, the SLF and the LWD South Tyrol are also represented with guest contributions. New this year: print version available from the Alpine Club store.