Nordstau

When Ullr orders a Melange and a snowfall for five euros for the bus driver at the tobacconist, you know that it will only snow in the east of Austria.

Ullr doesn't let himself get carried away and unpacks high winter weather conditions after most ski resorts close. With the exception of Ullr's disciples, people everywhere are complaining about it.

The snow from the last alarm came and went. The waxing and waning of Alert 7 is over and the rain slurry is now freezing to the new base, where it hasn't been washed away. And it's going to get a surprisingly nice pack of snow by Friday.

The WeatherBlog occasionally reads in The New Yorker magazine, which is usually as great as it is sometimes lengthy, and has found an interesting article there. It's about literary weather: the weather as meaningful plot background, stylistic device, novel character. Before weather forecasts were known, the weather was logically a direct manifestation of divine anger or pleasure. Where else could it come from? From the Greek legends of the gods to the Old Testament, the weather is angrily tossed around with thunder, lightning, wind, waves and the odd plague of locusts. Classics by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters would probably only be half as thick if the London fog and stormy weather of English upland moors had been given less of a supporting role.

A powerful hurricane depression called Eckard has formed over Iceland. Between Eckard and a high pressure system over Scandinavia, the strong pressure difference is shoveling masses of warm subtropical air towards us and much further north. The North Pole reaches temperatures of almost 50° above average (equivalent to just above zero).

It has already started to snow and the new alarm has to come, you think? Absolutely right, but you won't miss anything today, because this alert is for Thursday / Friday, as the alert amounts won't fall until tomorrow.

As explained by our colleague Orakel, a north-westerly current will bring a supply of snow to the NW congestion areas, which are already in a better position. In the south, winter is still a long time coming and there is a threat of spring on the horizon at the meteorological start of winter.

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.

Chef Ullr has realized that powder-hungry people in the northwest of the Alps have only been served lousy food for a while now and is trying to change that: by preparing a delicious northwest current for you and sprucing up the run-down northern Alps, just like his colleagues on TV do with the restaurants. But first there's something quick for in between, a powder snack so to speak.

It has already started today, the northern congestion. Unfortunately for everyone west of the Kitzbühel Alps, there won't be much of it until Tuesday. All of Ullr's disciples who looked enviously to the west from the Salzkammergut and further east last week can now rejoice: because here there is northern congestion with amounts worthy of northern congestion. Nothing is coming in the south and west.

First of all: Ullr's demonstration of power and the model snow apocalypse from a few days ago will probably not happen at the end of this week, so you can use your bunkers as party cellars again, mothball the shotguns and turn your Madmax cars with armor back into the KIA combos they once were.

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.