WeatherBlog 2 2022/23 | Stocktaking and outlook

"Too weird for an alarm"

In the spirit of weather journalistic transparency, we want to give the PG community exclusive insights into important editorial decision-making processes today. The picture on the right shows an excerpt from an in-depth chat between PowderAlert, WeatherBlog and Tippspiel from earlier this week. The reason was the snowfall expected for Tuesday. A possible "winter start weather event" had been looming for days beforehand. Depending on the model run, there was sometimes talk of half a meter on the main ridge, sometimes of local upward outliers exclusively in the SLO-AT-IT triangle, sometimes of just 10 centimetres but everywhere. The Adriatic low responsible did not want to be pinned down until shortly beforehand. The PowderAlert, always striving for consistency in its oracles, found the risk too high that the alarm amounts (from 30cm) would not be reached and refrained from issuing an alarm.

And now?

The outlook is changeable for the time being. "Changeable" is a nice meteorological word that leaves plenty of room for interpretation. First and foremost, it means that new Atlantic disturbances are constantly producing rapid weather changes. On Monday, a front with rain and snow will pass through the western Alps, which doesn't look particularly productive from today's perspective. After that, the weather will continue to be mixed, probably with moderate temperatures and occasional showers, but without large amounts of fresh snow.

As usual, the medium-term development depends very much on the polar vortex. This is forecast to become increasingly out of round from next week, forming two distinct cold poles over Russia and the Canadian Arctic. For us, this constellation will create a low-gradient "swamp situation" and Atlantic lows will be deflected over a large area. Of course, the whole thing is not yet set in stone and we are hoping for more exciting surprises!