Weststau

The time has finally come! The saga continues. I hope George Lucas forgives me for my entry and doesn't sue me. And no, I can't tell you if you can see Luke Skywalker's hand reaching for R2D2 in the trailer for "Star Wars - The Force Awakens", but I can tell you where it's snowing. That's what I'm here for and what we've all been waiting for.

Ahoy you powder pirates. Ullr has promised loot and now the dump is appearing in the telescopes. After the rain is before the snow. It has already started to snow, or rather to rain below 1600 to 2000 m, and will continue to snow until Tuesday night or early Tuesday morning, with the snow line dropping and it will also snow again at usable altitudes. There will be a westerly flow across the entire northern slope of the Alps, but the largest amounts will come from the Lower Valais to the French Hautes Alpes.

Well, it won't be quite that extreme, but Ullr is finally flexing its muscles in the north this winter and is guaranteed to lure most freeriders to the Alps. This alert is valid until Saturday and then theoretically part two ("The two dumps") should follow from Saturday to Monday, depending on marginal lows, for which it is not yet clear whether they will come at all.

The WeatherBlog is tired from skiing, so this week just a bit of framing for the PowderAlert

The southern winter won't be really boring for Ullr, but he's turning the screws so that snow is also coming to the north and especially the west.

After a rather chilly spring, it has suddenly become summer in the last few days. You can tell by the pale extremities that our fellow human beings are showing off as they stroll through the city, by the pigeons and couples playing turtle and, last but not least, by the temperature. A summer day is, at least according to meteorological understanding, a day on which the maximum temperature reaches at least 25°.

The westerly drift is still alive and kicking and is once again providing us with a usable gliding surface!

At the end of the week, a cold front brings brief cooling with fresh snow. Possible change in the general weather situation next year.

The current weather situation offers large east/west and cold/warm contrasts and remains difficult to predict. A sudden warming of the stratosphere could determine the further course of winter.

At last Ullr is listening to the envious deep snow divers east of the Arlberg, because they haven't exactly been spoiled with dumps so far, so now the cornucopia is also being poured out in the east of Felix Austria.

White mountains guard blooming flowers in green valleys, those who forget their sunscreen will regret it and early birds catch the firn.

While the north-western Alps are drowning in snow, there is no sign of winter in the lowlands. January temperatures are often around 5 degrees above the long-term average and it has only seriously snowed above around 600 meters so far. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight to the wet and mild westerly slide - or is there?