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

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.

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!