It's not winter yet, neither in meteorological terms nor according to the calendar. There isn't much snow yet either. Nevertheless, with the unconditional cheerfulness of the annually greeting marmot, it has been suggested for a few weeks now that something is ready. Online portals that have gone into summer hibernation are waking up again, the glaciers are filling up with ski clubs from central Germany, and if you believe the tracks in the off-piste terrain, which is sometimes really difficult, then even the common freerider seems to be blessed with a surplus of pre-season motivation.
Current situation and outlook
So what could it be all about? After it snowed heavily at some point in October, right down to the valleys (remember traffic problems due to fallen trees), it was warmer than average and foehn-like in the northern Alps until a few days ago, thanks to a tough south-westerly situation. This is now over and temperatures are back to what you would expect in mid-November. On the front of a high over the Atlantic, cold air will advance on Thursday and a cold front will probably bring a handful of snow on Friday night. There is a little more potential towards Saturday in the southern Alps, where a genoa low is likely to cause accumulating precipitation. And yes, that's right, there'll be Föhn again in the north.
And what else?
How was the summer? Does anyone remember the floods at the beginning of June? When the Austrian Alps were spilled over and you could watch the flood wave move downstream in various rivers and desperate residents were still dragging sandbags in the bright sunshine days later? In addition to immense damage, the whole thing also ensured that the ablation (= ice melt) on many glaciers in the hydrological year (October to September) 2012/13 was significantly lower than in previous years. Then there was this:
These are two composite satellite images from October 12 (image source). You can see, from left to right, Phailin, Nari and Wipha, which caused mass evacuations in Asia when it snowed heavily for the first time in this country. Phailin was one of the strongest cyclones ever observed in the Indian Ocean. Note that Phailin more or less completely fills the Bay of Bengal in this picture. Before anyone thinks that this is what a genoa low (Gulf of Genoa) looks like, let me remind you that the Bay of Bengal is about six times larger than Germany. A similar storm claimed over 10,000 lives there in 1999. Thanks to the early evacuation of over half a million people, there were very few fatalities in Phaila. Unfortunately, the current situation is different with Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines a few days ago and is still rightly dominating the news. Finally, a picture that at least gives the WeatherBlog goosebumps and makes us think how nice it is to be able to think about such banal things here at home, such as whether winter is really and finally here again.
