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WeatherBlog 12 2017/18 | January Review

Warm and still snowy

by Lea Hartl 01/30/2018
Anyone who lives in the mountains is unlikely to be complaining about the lack of winter feeling at the moment - the villages at higher altitudes are covered in deep snow and the enormous snowfalls of the last few weeks, including the resulting road closures and avalanche damage, are still very much in evidence. However, as January has been very mild, the picture is very different in the lowlands.

In lower altitudes, instead of masses of snow, there are green meadows and worries about plants that mistakenly think it's spring and are sprouting too early. January 2018 was in Germany 3.4°C warmer than the average for the 1981-2010 reference period (and 4.3°C warmer than the average for the 1961-1990 period), making it the sixth warmest January since records began in 1881. At 168% of average precipitation levels, it was also a very wet month. There was an exceptionally high level of precipitation, particularly in south-western Germany, which often fell as snow in the low mountain ranges and the Alps. In the southern Black Forest, some stations recorded more than 500 mm of monthly precipitation. For comparison: in the relatively dry, inner Alpine Ötztal, the annual precipitation is around 800mm.

A similar picture can be seen in Austria: temperatures have been measured here since 1796 and there have only been two Januaries that were warmer than January 2018, which was 3.8°C above the 1981-2010 average. The number of frost days in many regions of Austria in January has also never been so low, at least since records began. Similar to Germany, there was around 70% more precipitation than average in Austria. At low altitudes, most of this fell as rain, while at high altitudes it was known to fall as snow (with occasional rain events that briefly spoiled the skiing fun). The days with fresh snow and snow days (days with fresh snow and days with existing snow cover) were accordingly between 50 and 100% above average at higher altitudes (in Tyrol even more in some cases), and 50 to 100% below average at lower altitudes.

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In Switzerland, January was unsurprisingly also very mild and very rainy. MeteoSwiss is expecting the warmest January since measurements began in 1864. In western Switzerland in particular, it was extremely mild in places, with an average monthly temperature of 6.2°C recorded in Geneva, for example. Similar to Austria, the temperatures at the high measuring stations in Switzerland were above average, but not as extremely warm as in the valleys. While it snowed from the south at the beginning of January (southern Valais and Simplon area), the heavy snowfall from the west to northwest that has already been mentioned several times here and in the PowderAlert followed in the second half of January.

The intensive snowfall period (rain in the lowlands) between January 16 and 22 was followed by very mild thawing weather throughout the northern Alps, which led to snow melt and, in some cases, flooding. The greater Paris area was and is particularly affected, where the Seine burst its banks. 1500 people had to leave their homes, in some cases there is no electricity and public transport is severely disrupted, including in the center of Paris, where various metro stations are closed.

Also worth mentioning is the very early pollen bloom due to the mild temperatures. In Switzerland, the hazel bushes are up to a month early in some areas.

The reason for the mild temperatures in combination with a lot of precipitation was the persistent westerly weather conditions, which - sometimes from the southwest, sometimes from the northwest - steered relatively warm, very humid air masses from the Atlantic towards the Alps. The snowy catastrophic winter of 1999 was also rather mild and characterized by westerly weather with rain up to high altitudes. For "lowland winters", significantly lower temperatures are required, which can usually only be achieved with the help of continental cold in the east, such as can be tapped into by winter cold highs. Sustained snow down to low altitudes tends to occur mainly in purely northerly conditions, where the air masses transported in do not pass the warm Atlantic, but only the cool Arctic Ocean.

Outlook

The high pressure influence of the last few days will remain predominant today, Wednesday, but will slowly weaken and somewhat colder air will reach the Alpine region. On Thursday, a cold front is approaching from the west, which should bring snow to the valleys in the north and west. At the moment it looks as if there will also be a small Mediterranean low for the south-east (border area Ö/Slo, Karawanken, Carnic Alps) with a possibly considerable load of fresh snow in the night to Friday, although this is notoriously uncertain in this area. The weather will tend to calm down at the weekend with significantly cooler temperatures than recently

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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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