WeatherBlog 17 2021/22 | Desert air

Current situation and outlook

A small area of low pressure with a core near Gibraltar is producing stormy conditions over the local desert regions on the one hand and a south-westerly flow for the Alpine region on the other. The desert dust makes it into higher layers of air and into this same flow and thus lands here. The arrival of the brownish Saharan air could be seen quite clearly yesterday, both "live" outside the window and in the time lapse of the webcams. For anyone who missed it: webcams in Switzerland or Vorarlberg are particularly impressive, yesterday, between around 7:30 and 10:00, for example here.

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Webcam Glücksteinhütte, 10:20, 15.3.22

fotowebcam.eu

From the Pyrenees, there are impressive pictures of a blanket of snow covered in brown-reddish dust. How much dust will settle on the snow cover in this country remains to be seen - in regions that get a bit of precipitation today, it will also wash out more dust. The greeting from the Sahara is likely to keep us busy tomorrow (Thursday) and then slowly disappear on Friday. The veil clouds that accompany the dust should no longer be an issue by the weekend at the latest, although the uncertainties in the forecast will increase from Friday. The trend is, who would have thought it, towards calm, sunny high-pressure weather. However, clouds and even some precipitation cannot be ruled out. One thing is relatively certain: it will be colder again than recently. We're heading towards a cool northerly flow, as we've had for some time before the recent foehn days - hence the (currently rather small) option of somewhat more changeable weather, especially in the eastern Alps.

The large-scale situation is not very pleasing, at least if you're looking forward to a change in the weather and precipitation. There is still nothing in sight that would reliably end the drought. In the stratosphere (higher than the troposphere, where "our" weather takes place), the polar vortex appears to be becoming more unstable, and the crystal ball may already be showing signs of a "final warming" and the seasonal disintegration of the stratospheric vortex. This produces increased uncertainties in the forecast for the troposphere (= the usual weather forecast).

500hPa geopotential and ground pressure (GFS), for Wednesday, Friday, next Monday. Current S/SW flow with Saharan air. Then calm high pressure weather again. From Sunday/beginning of next week increasingly cooler with high-over-low situation and E/NE flow.

meteociel.fr

Drought and warm Arctic

In addition to the less than uplifting outlook, we can also note that it is still extremely dry. Even the few raindrops in the west at the beginning of the week and the isolated drops today do little to change this. In large parts of Austria, there has been no precipitation at all in March. Unsurprisingly, the risk of forest fires is now also high in the northern Alps. In Reutte, intensive fire-fighting work took place over several days to bring a forest fire under control.

Due to the "out-of-round" general weather situation, warm air from the Atlantic is currently being pumped into the polar regions. This leads to temperature anomalies of over 20°C (20° above the average, not 20° as an absolute value) and poor conditions for the already thin sea ice. If you want that winter feeling at the moment, you have to go to the US east coast, or perhaps straight to the southern hemisphere in the fall...