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WeatherBlog 18 2024/25 | Refresh at last, at least in the south

Powder in the south, still dry in the north

03/12/2025 • by Lea Hartl
Two PowderAlerts after a long drought! And at least in parts of the Alps, it's continuing to be reasonably wintry! The south in particular is benefiting from a relatively stationary area of low pressure that lies diagonally over Spain and France and is repeatedly producing sĂĽdstau this week. In the north (east), the amounts remain lower and will not significantly improve the snow conditions, but will hopefully at least alleviate the acute risk of forest fires.

Current situation and outlook

The Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) announced in the last WeatherBlog has largely materialized. The troposphere is reacting and the large-scale pressure distribution that has developed over the last few days can be seen, at least in part, as a response to the SSW. The meandering of the jet stream around pronounced high and low pressure centers is typical, as are the late winter cold air outbreaks, as is currently the case in Canada and the eastern USA. Between Greenland and Iceland lies a pronounced high pressure system that blocks the Atlantic westerly drift. To the east of this lies an elongated area of low pressure that stretches diagonally from Scandinavia to Spain.

The (more or less) same constellation already caused snow in the southwest and south föhn in the northern Alps at the weekend and is bringing more snow to the southern slopes of the Alps these days. We'll leave the details to our colleague Orakel - we're expecting another alert today. Basically, the southstau-south föhn combination will continue with corresponding precipitation focal points on the southern slopes of the Alps. Not much will arrive in the northern Alps, the best chances are in the western Alps near the main ridge. Temperatures have normalized somewhat compared to last weekend (+20°C in some valleys!), but will remain very mild, especially in the Föhn areas.

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Drought and forest fires

The last few months have been very dry, especially in the Eastern Alps. In Austria, there has been less than half the average precipitation with the greatest deficits in the east so far in 2025. There have also already been 32 forest fires recorded this year. Most were small and were extinguished quickly. In particular, a large fire in the MĂĽrzsteg Alps (near Rax-Schneeberg) is still keeping the fire departments busy. Another relatively large forest fire in Vinschgau (South Tyrol) last week has now been extinguished. A fire in the Rotwand area near Fischbachau (Upper Bavaria) could be followed quite impressively via Webcam. All the forest fires mentioned were probably caused by humans. The soil and vegetation are very dry at the moment because the fresh, "juicy" shoots are not yet there, but dry plant remains from the previous year are lying around and make excellent fuel. It is typical for the risk of forest fires to reach an initial peak in spring in years with little snow, although the burnt areas usually remain smaller than in summer fires.

Chaos in the USA

Last week, the WB colleagues concluded that crumbling transatlantic relations have no impact on the weather. I would like to add that massive staff and budget cuts at NOAA, NWS and NASA may not affect the weather, but in the medium term they are likely to have an impact on the quality of weather forecasts, in the US and - depending on what is actually implemented - everywhere else.

There are already plenty of examples of the effects of the cuts, both large and small. "Cuts" means, among other things, that numerous employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and related organizations were fired. In sparsely populated regions such as Alaska, the NWS already had few resources and the loss of individual employees more or less immediately to reductions in services. In Kotzebue, a medium-sized village on the northwest coast of Alaska, radiosoundings were indefinitely suspended after the first wave of firings at the end of February. So data is being lost in a region where there is little data anyway, but where climatic changes are particularly rapid and where it would be important for model development and climate and weather research in general to have a solid data basis. A start-up now wants to step in with a special sensor in Kotzebue and replace the radiosoundings. On the one hand, this could close the data gap, but on the other, it has also led to criticism, as it opens the door to the commercialization of previously state-run, non-profit services and open data.

Almost all weather apps and online weather maps are based on data produced and made openly available by a government weather service - including the currently so beautifully colorful PowderGuide snow maps! The WeatherBlog figures: "Saving money" by taking a chainsaw to science and weather services is a very bad idea!

ℹ️PowderGuide.com is nonprofit-making, so we are glad about any support. If you like to improve our DeepL translation backend, feel free to write an email to the editors with your suggestions for better understandings. Thanks a lot in advance!

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