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WeatherBlog 11 2021/22 | What comes after the northern congestion?

Calming down, warming up, then: hard to say.

by Lea Hartl 02/02/2022
Everyone should have noticed by now: It's snowing. As predicted by the oracle, the amount of fresh snow in the Nordstau so far is impressive. The 48-hour difference in fresh snowfall on the Seegrube is over one meter and there is likely to be more to come today. Other reservoir locations have been similarly richly endowed. Almost the entire northern Alps have a 4-meter forecast for today.

Current situation and outlook

This is thanks to the combination of high pressure in the west and low pressure in the east, which we already discussed last week. A strong northwesterly current is developing between the two pressure centers, pushing moisture towards the Alps. Today, Wednesday, the snowy episode will slowly come to an end. Apart from a few last showers, the snowfall should subside by tomorrow. Although there will still be clouds in the traffic jam on Thursday, the wind will subside and it will generally become calmer again.

As the disturbances move away, a much warmer air mass will reach us over the next two days - it will become drier, sunnier and the zero degree line will rise rapidly towards the summit regions (see middle map in the picture below --> high pressure may prevail for a short time, milder air mass). The latter will exacerbate the already tense avalanche situation - the maps of the avalanche situation reports are more red than ever (level 4). Caution is the order of the day!

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According to the current status, it will cool down again slightly on Friday, but will remain relatively friendly with a mix of sun and cloud. A new cold front is expected to arrive in the north on Saturday (right-hand map in the image above), which should also bring some snow again, but this will be rather insignificant compared to the current precipitation. The development from the weekend onwards is very uncertain for the not-so-large forecast period. We are moving from a north-westerly flow more towards a westerly flow. We currently have a large-scale division of the pressure centers into highs in the west and lows in the east, which will become more and more: High in the southwest (Bay of Biscay), low in the northeast (Scandinavia). Accordingly, the jet will move "more obliquely" over Central Europe. The Alps will initially (weekend) remain more or less within reach of the frontal zone. From the beginning of next week, it currently looks like high pressure and warmth, but this is not yet set in stone. However, major snowfalls like the current one are not expected again for the time being.

Föhn and dryness away from the north föhn

In the run-up to the snowfall of the last few days, there was also some strong north föhn north of the main Alpine ridge. The station graphic from Innsbruck Airport clearly shows how the northwesterly foehn reached the valley floor on Sunday. The temperature and wind speed shoot up, the relative humidity decreases and the wind is constantly coming from the northwest. Here's a comprehensive explanation of the wind situation in the Inn Valley during north föhn, if anyone is interested.

Which was over relatively quickly in Innsbruck, the southern slopes of the Alps were affected to varying degrees throughout the entire N-NW situation, which is coming to an end. The snow situation there is now correspondingly miserable. Even apart from poor skiing conditions, the drought in the south is increasingly becoming a problem. There has been a forest fire above Lago Maggiore for a few days now, which has already forced dozens of people to be evacuated. The strong wind (north föhn!) has made fighting the fire more difficult so far. So we can only hope that things will get better when the wind dies down soon...

Not surprisingly, January was significantly drier and warmer across the Alps than the climatological average - not even the fresh snow on the last few days of January can make up for this. The graphs below show deviations in temperature and precipitation. As always, it is interesting to compare different climate periods, as provided by ZAMG for Austria, for example. While there are no significant differences in precipitation, the change in period leads to a significantly different picture in terms of temperature.

Photo gallery

This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

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