City beautification trees lining cycle paths are slowly beginning to blossom and you increasingly cycle through clouds of sweet-smelling flowers. In public parks, motivated people are falling off their slacklines at every corner, albeit sometimes into dog poo that has only recently emerged from under the snow. More and more often, you hear the words of those who have finished with winter: "You really shouldn't complain this winter."
Warm, dry March
Of course, the question arises as to whether you really shouldn't. Firstly, everything south of the main ridge and north of Turin is definitely allowed to complain. And secondly, do two months with lots of snow really make a good winter? And what if these two months were more like one and a half and it was otherwise exceptionally dry? Of course, good is relative and of course you can have fun even when the snow is bad. Rumor has it that this is even possible regardless of the presence of snow.
Nevertheless, at 2.8°C above the long-term average, last March was the third warmest March in Austria since measurements began in 1767 (source: ZAMG). It was warmer than average, sunny and dry throughout the Alpine region. If we briefly put aside the pleasant memories of the powder parties with Andrea and co., the extremely dry phase before the first snowfalls in mid-December comes to mind. Despite the still considerable snow cover in the Karwendel, four hectares of forest near Zirl near Innsbruck burned down at the end of last week and you could be reminded of forest fire reports from Ischgl in November. In North Tyrol, only 50% of the usual precipitation fell in March, in East Tyrol it was only 30%. That's more than in November and you can of course now glorify the 2011/12 season and indulge in nothing but skiing memories while climbing and biking before Easter, but you can also complain a little first, at least according to the WeatherBlog.
Outlook and German pop
With this in mind and completely subjective: At the moment, a mild south-westerly current is bringing some precipitation, especially on the western main ridge. That's nice. It will be much cooler everywhere over the Easter weekend, which is also nice. Even better: a cold front will arrive from the north on Saturday, bringing a little snow to the east as the snow line drops. And if not, we complain and don't go to Lake Garda because winter is annoying. It makes us feel old, but we rummage through our hard drives and sing along to "Wir kommen um uns zu beschweren." We used to think Tocotronic were kind of cute too. Peter Licht and the end of the complaint, on the other hand, not.
