The WeatherBlog is back from its summer break, although summer is doing the same thing right now
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Summer review
A lot has happened since we last wrote here. The late touring season in May and June didn't really want to happen, the WeatherBlog remembers frustrating collapses in insufficient firn caps because it just wouldn't freeze through properly. Then you just turn around and go back to bed, going for a walk at four in the morning has its advantages. The wet weather in May and the first few days of June had already softened the ground considerably when an extremely heavy thunderstorm in parts of Tyrol caused the barrel, or in this case the streams, to overflow. Large mudslides caused severe damage in the Paznaun, Sellrain and Stubaital valleys. In some places, the mud rolled right through the middle of villages and once again it was possible to reflect on the fact that development plans and colorful zones are just a matter of statistics. If weather events, as in this case, lie on the distribution curve in the "very unlikely, but possible" area, then buildings located where a problem is "very unlikely, but possible" may also be affected. We then continued with some extremely hot weeks. This time the WeatherBlog remembers a day when we went hiking because it's not so hot at the top. We were lying in a meadow at an altitude of over 2000 meters and simply didn't want to doze off on the summit because it was still far too hot. In July and August, various temperature records fell once again and the remnants of the winter snow quickly evaporated.
The poor glaciers!
In many glaciers, virtually no reserves made it through the summer, meaning that even in the upper areas, where there should actually be snow all year round, none remained. The ice melt was correspondingly massive. The evaluations of the mass balance season have largely not yet been completed, but it can be assumed that the losses are on a similar scale to the legendary heatwave summer of 2003.
Last September was the warmest September ever recorded worldwide, while September and October were rather cool in the Alpine region. October in particular was also rather wet except for its last few days, considering the short but decent winter greeting at the beginning of the month.
The current situation
We have a blocking situation to thank for the current rather golden autumn and the increasingly icy glacier slopes, and we're sitting in the gradient-weak center of it. Nothing major will change until the weekend, apart from a few clouds on Thursday, which won't do anyone any harm. It will remain mild at high altitudes, while the valleys will fill up more and more with fog.
The outlook
At the beginning of next week, the current will turn to the west and the Atlantic block will break up. At the very least, there will be changes and it will become more unsettled again. However, a severe onset of winter is not really to be expected.
We're hoping for more exciting weather next week and hope you have fun hiking or eating ice cream in the fall until then.
