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

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!

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.