As the meteorological start of spring approaches, the weather is about to change and the wintry weather of the last few days will be replaced by increasing high pressure
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February and winter balance
In terms of weather, February was not far out of the ordinary. In Austria, the west of the country was slightly cooler than average, while the east was slightly warmer. There was also slightly more snow in the west and slightly less in the east. The overall picture for the meteorological winter (December, January, February) is different. Winter 14/15 was 1.8°C warmer than average across Austria, making it the 8th warmest winter in recorded history (since 1767!). If you only look at the higher altitudes, the temperature was much closer to normal values, so it wasn't sooooo warm in the mountains. The amount of precipitation was fairly balanced across the entire country and throughout the winter, although as is usually the case, there were significant regional deviations from the average. To summarize, it's nice that winter isn't really over in February.
Current situation
While cold, moist air from the north is currently still causing a slight northerly congestion and winter feeling, the weather seems to be slowly catching up with the meteorological spring. The current trough will drip into the Mediterranean over the next few days and an offshoot of the Azores High will tip towards Central Europe and appear to be trying to make contact with the continental high in the east. The remnants of our trough will continue to bob around in the south for a while, so that at least the eastern Alps will be exposed to a slight north-easterly flow, which will dampen the otherwise mild, spring-like temperatures somewhat. A kind of shifted high-over-low situation is emerging for the entire medium term, i.e. high geopotential in the north, low in the south. This type of large-scale weather situation is quite stubborn and is likely to provide rather unexciting, high pressure-dominated weather for the foreseeable future. Friday will be increasingly sunny from the west, with a few clouds in the eastern Alps and generally windy conditions. The weekend is expected to be quite friendly everywhere with a few high cloud fields here and there and still some strong winds.
