Ostalpen

Perfect weather, sunburn, new lines, parking lot beer and powder turns in the seemingly endless terrain on the Kitzsteinhorn.

Today, Wednesday, will be cloudy and wet across the entire Alpine region with the passage of a cold front. There will be the most fresh snow on the main Alpine ridge, but there may also be the odd heavy shower in the "peripheral areas". There will probably be no alerts anywhere, those who get 20 cm can be satisfied.

Ullr is slowly saying goodbye to our beloved pattern of the weekend trough, but first sends his best wishes to the Eastern Alps!

And like a ninja, he sneaks out of the shadows into the weather maps and turns inconspicuous amounts into a veritable alarm. The Oracle didn't take a close look and Zack hit Ullr, because the untrained eye is easily fooled by a ninja alert that looked like less than 30cm on the maps from the weekend. It was only because the Oracle happened to look at the radar that he realized something was going on.

This year, the weather is once again following the perceived trend of "bathing weather at Christmas, snow at Easter" and is generally "april" for the Easter weekend. Why is it often so unstable in April?

Moisture penetration and nocturnal radiation now become the primary avalanche-forming factor. What about temperature reserve, original layer sequence, humidity and isothermality?

Outlook: Warm, cold, snow, rain, sun, thunderstorms - the carnival days have it all. Embedded in a windy westerly current, several small lows are heading towards the Alps in quick succession. After cold and fresh snow down to some valley locations on Friday, warmer weather will quickly follow.

After the wintry, more or less snowy interlude of the last few days, high pressure is now increasingly asserting itself again. There is still a bit of fluff in the southwest, but the remnants of the disturbances will quickly disappear. We are falling back into the pattern of the previous winter: Atlantic block, cold air from the east, unusually warm Arctic Ocean.

The intermediate high influence of the last few days is coming to an end. A warm front will reach the northern side of the Alps from the west during the course of Wednesday. This will be accompanied by milder temperatures, fresh snow and lots of wind. This week in the WeatherBlog: More details on the outlook for the coming days and the sea effect snow in south-eastern Europe.

The long awaited and since at least last week hyped northern storm has arrived. My colleague Orakel has already summarized the practical information (short version: in the east - Salzburg/STMK area - it looks best in terms of amounts and base, it will be very windy), so we are less concerned with the result of the current weather situation and more with its general structure.

As of today, SNOWGRID maps from ZAMG for Austria and some neighboring parts of the Eastern Alps are available on PowderGuide. SNOWGRID is a high-resolution snowpack model that shows the spatial distribution of the snowpack in the terrain very well. We now have the current snow depth and the change in snow depth over the last 24 hours as a separate sub-category in the Weather/Snow section and are pleased to be able to offer this service together with ZAMG.

Why does only the East get something from the PowderAlert? What happens afterwards? What about the possible weather change at the turn of the year?