Strahlungsbilanz

The current weather is a good opportunity to take a closer look at the sun and its radiation. As we know, it is not only responsible for sunburn and the general living conditions on our planet, but also does one or two things to the snow.

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 ...

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.

Anyone who, like the WeatherBlog, was traveling on Alpine highways at dusk yesterday may have admired the borderline kitschy lighting mood: A full moon hanging low in front of a soft pastel-colored sky, with glowing mountains beside it.

Spring can easily be mistaken for summer at the moment, especially on sweaty ski tours in black Gore-Tex clothing and merino wool underwear, which you only don't tear off and throw into the nearest crevasse because of certain social norms.