WeatherBlog 3 2022/23 | Stormy times!

The starting point

The PowderAlert has now officially heralded the start of winter and the social media feeds are filling up with epic Pow shots, shredded lines and seasonal safety updates. The shredded lines are still suspiciously full of rocks in the landings, but with the right Instagram filter, even that can look epic. In any case, the mountains are now more or less white - more so in the south and west than in the north and east. With the next, hopefully approaching snowfalls, perhaps the rock problem will slowly improve. However, the snow cover problems that are now also present are becoming more critical. The SLF has now started regular, daily bulletin operations (with intermediate stages!), Salzburg and Vorarlberg too. The "Avalanche Report" for Tyrol, South Tyrol and Trentino is still a kind of patchwork. Trentino, like the rest of Italy (except South Tyrol), has already started warning operations. The map for (South) Tyrol is still blank, but that will certainly change soon.

When it comes to the weather, a look at the GFS northern hemisphere map shows us a very non-circular polar vortex. A rather pronounced Greenland blocking is currently decisive for what is happening here. High air pressure over Greenland is blocking the flow over the Atlantic and the air has to move around the blocking high in a very large wave motion. As a result, cold air flows from the far north to Central Europe. The Alps are currently still slightly south of the cold air and are only touched by the cold and low-pressure influence from the north.

The Föhn will break down on Friday evening or Saturday at the latest. The current will turn to the NW but remain strong. The focus of precipitation will thus shift to the northern side of the Alps. At the same time, temperatures will drop, so snow is expected down to low altitudes, at least in the north. Sunday looks cold and mixed, but will tend to be less stormy and more relaxed than Saturday. It will remain wintry cold at the beginning of next week too, with the weather likely to be calmer. After that, the forecast will become much more uncertain - this can be clearly seen in the ensemble forecasts from around Tuesday next week (image left). The further apart the lines are, the greater the uncertainties.

Overall, the WeatherBlog doesn't think the weather outlook is too bad at the moment. The extremely high temperatures in large parts of the Arctic seem worryingly symptomatic and we don't like them (see picture below), but on the spatially and temporally limited scale of skiing in the Alps, we're in a pleasantly wintry range!