Polarwirbel

Last weekend was interesting in terms of weather and regrettable in terms of skiing. After heavy rain during the night, temperatures of around 20 degrees were measured in many places during the day on Sunday. The leader in Austria was Pottschach (Lower Austria) with 23.2° - a new national record for February. What was going on?

Just a few days ago, the Alps were still in a mild, westerly flow. There was precipitation, but unfortunately not in the right state of aggregation for the most part. What has changed?

Warm, unsettled westerly weather will dominate the Alpine region. With fresh winds and a high snow line, minor disturbances will keep moving through, initially on Friday night and Sunday. Otherwise, it will be reasonably bright and, as mentioned, warm. The westward slide will continue into next week. The possibility of a downstream development from the middle of next week offers some hope, but as usual this is still very uncertain.

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).

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.

Every year, we wish for reliable announcements that the winter will be great, preferably including a great forecast for the long weekend when the ski trip is already booked. Every year there is no such thing. This week's WeatherBlog deals with the following question from PG reader Benny_Supernova: If you now combine that (last week's polar vortex topic) with a 65% chance of an upcoming "El Nino" in the Northern Hemisphere winter, what does that add up to? Another "hammer winter" in the Northern Alps (e.g. Innsbruck, where my best skiing buddy lives)?

The WeatherBlog has been asked to explain why winter is "broken". We could go on for a while about what exactly "broken" means - broken in comparison to climatological averages or only in my subjective perception? Broken in general or just on my local mountain? And anyway, meteorologically speaking, it's only been winter for 3 days, so how are you supposed to know if something is broken? But we're not like that ...

The end of the fall in Austria was the warmest on record. In September it was on average 0.7°C warmer than the long-term average, in October 2.2°C, and November is likely to be even warmer with an expected 3.8°C above average. If December is not exceptionally cold, it can be assumed that 2014 will also set a new temperature record for the year as a whole.

Nothing fundamental is changing in the Alps for the time being: in the north, spring flowers are swaying in the foehn, in the south it is raining or snowing heavily. This week, we look beyond the Alps and take a look at tropical oceans and fire-breathing mountains in Indonesia.

PowderGuide über-user Tobi asks: how do such pronounced southern winters or, last winter, northern winters come about? I'm aware that there is a certain tendency to preserve the snow. But the fact that it always turns out to be as extreme as this winter is astonishing.

The northern congestion was short-lived and we fall back into a south-westerly situation that is quite impressive: While there are warnings of heavy snowfall and high to very high avalanche danger on the southern slopes of the Alps, the north can expect a mild foehn.

PG reader Randy-Random obviously has some catching up to do when it comes to polar vortex splits, and a revision lesson at the beginning of the year was always a good idea at school, so we'll confidently leave the fuss about individual snowflakes on individual mountains to our colleague Oracle and look at the bigger picture again.