WeatherBlog 11 2023/24 | suedstau, north foehn & a look into the crystal ball

Current situation and outlook

For some time now, the Alps have been caught in a strong westerly current that produces very mild air masses, mostly sunny weather and no fresh snow. The jet and the disturbances embedded in it pass too far to the north to have any effect here. This is quite different in Norway, for example, where storm Ingunn blew a bus off the road a few days ago, among other things.

Today, Wednesday (7 February), the current over the Atlantic is still fairly zonal, i.e. it runs fairly straight from west to east without any major waves or detours. This is about to change: a strong low is developing off the European Atlantic coast and the jet will have a significant southward bulge by the end of the week. The large-scale current will therefore undulate and become more meridional, i.e. have a stronger north-south component. The depression forms west of the Alps and only moves slowly to the east. We are located at the front of the trough, i.e. in front of the actual low in terms of the direction of flow (= east of the low). Air from the south reaches us on this "wave front". This is warm and moist and is likely to bring the classic combination of southerly congestion and northerly foehn starting Friday.

From the middle of next week, red and purple bars will be added, with more red than purple (= more ensembles will see the red version of the future). Red stands for "Scandinavian Blocking" (BL), i.e. a blocking high over Scandinavia. Purple stands for Atlantic Ridge (AR), i.e. bulging high wedge over the Atlantic. Here is (much) more information on the patterns and the pattern mapping method for the ensembles. We can therefore conclude that high pressure over Scandinavia (red) is reasonably likely in the medium future, but we can also see that the bars contain various other possible colours. This means that the other variants are also possible, just less likely. The red future version certainly contains winter options, provided that the Scandi High allows cool air masses to reach us on its eastern side and does not slide too far to the east itself. In any case, more interesting prospects than last week! We remain curious.