WeatherBlog 3 2026/27: Cold Front Brings Cooler Weather to the North

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The glacier ski resorts are now open. For the most part, these are ski resorts located where a glacier once was, so the “traditional” start of the season in early October is often no longer possible. To groom a run on glacier ice, you only need a few centimeters of snow because the surface is smooth and cold. If there’s no ice, the run has to be prepared on the comparatively warm, naturally uneven scree. This makes the effort involved significantly greater. Is it still nice when the wind bites your face a little again on the chairlift and the snow glistens during a brief sunny spell? Yes. Is it crowded, and is the terrain off-piste as rocky as it is crevassed? Also yes.

Do I want to use one of the increasingly ubiquitous “powder-something.ai” apps to “talk” to ChatGPT about the weather forecast? No.

ECMWF ensembles, Innsbruck grid point: A sharp drop in temperature with precipitation on Friday, followed by dry and sunny conditions, then uncertain.

ECMWF

The Current Situation

If there were already a rideable surface covering the entire region, the outlook for the next few days would be quite solid. However, such a surface seems to exist at most in Piedmont (see last week). Elsewhere, we’re ignoring the conditions on the ground and looking to the sky instead: The blocking pattern of the past few days (weeks? You lose track of time…) has broken up, and there’s a bit more momentum in the system again. Currently, the Alpine region is on the leading edge of a low-pressure system with its center west of France, which has been pushing relatively mild—but at least moist—air masses toward the Alpine arc from the west to southwest since the beginning of the week. The amounts have been manageable so far, and the snowline has generally been above 2,000 meters.

A little fresh snow for Friday the 13th on the Powder Map, with the focus on the eastern main ridge.

PG Powder Map

The Outlook

The steering low-pressure system in the Atlantic is increasingly extending eastward, while another low-pressure system is forming off the coast of Scandinavia. The Atlantic system we’re already familiar with is bringing another surge of warm air today (Wednesday)—accompanied by foehn effects in the north and, in some areas, heavy precipitation with high snowfall limits in the south. Over the next few days, the interaction with the northern system will become interesting, as it will tap into cold air masses. A cold front from the north is expected to reach the Alps on Friday, bringing a significant drop in temperature and fresh snow all the way down to the higher valleys. The PG Powder Map predicts that precipitation will be heaviest in the area of the Salzburg Alpine Main Ridge (Tauern, Venediger Group), with a good 20 cm of fresh snow on Friday. Once the front has passed, the weather will quickly settle down again, and the weekend looks quite sunny. Looking ahead to next week, various scenarios are still possible, but the trend points toward wet and mild conditions with active low-pressure development in the Atlantic—which would be just fine for building a base layer.

Friday’s cold front should provide a nice early-winter feel in the Northern Alps. As we all know, the practical possibilities for turning that feeling into snow sports activities are limited.

Following up on our colleagues’ weather report from last week, we’ll wrap things up with a musical recommendation:

Don’t believe the hype, don’t believe the likes!