The upcoming general weather situation (mostly sunny, cold, no fresh snow) is likely to stay with us for a while, thanks to Omega. The lowland regions, which have suffered from the unusual onset of winter in recent days, can now look forward to beautiful winter weather. And even in the Alps, the brownish Sahara dust will be covered with at least a little fresh snow before the longer sunny phase.
Cold spell: Building transformation
The angular layers in the middle area of the snowpack, which are currently causing us problems in many regions and which have been discussed several times in SnowFlurry, formed during a cold, dry period in mid-January. We can assume that the snow surface will continue to build up this time and if Ullr and Mrs. Holle bring us more snow at some point, things will become critical again. Unfortunately, the weak layers that already exist will not simply disappear into thin air either.
The WeatherBlog has recently been discussing the following topic with ski touring partners: What would have to happen for us to get out of the old snow problem? There are no particularly promising answers. Raining it down might work quite well at low altitudes, but not so much further up, and it wouldn't just be selectively destroying a weak layer if it poured down in sufficient quantities right up to the summit. Waiting for spring and a really solid firn cover is the classic, quite reliable test of patience. In view of the approaching cold, we throw the following, in this case completely unrealistic option into the room: building up the entire snow cover. This is also possible and where there is no board, there is no avalanche, even if the snowpack consists of a single weak layer. In dry, very cold regions, this type of snow cover is quite common. In the changeable Alps only very rarely, mostly in early winter when there is little snow after a long cold spell. It's not particularly good for skiing and there's usually hardly any snow, so perhaps we'd better wait for spring after all...
