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WeatherBlog 4 2020/21 | südstau! Review & outlook

Cloudy until the weekend, then mostly sunny

by Lea Hartl 12/09/2020
The influence of low pressure will remain until the weekend. It will continue to flake here and there, but the extreme snowfall - more on this in the current alert - will come to an end. This is a good thing for the core areas of the southern congestion.

What is fascinating to observe from afar often looks rather threatening in the middle of it: In Prägraten in East Tyrol, several districts were evacuated at the weekend. Buildings in Defereggen Valley were also damaged by an avalanche that reached the village. Impressive pictures of this can be found here. While it snowed in the higher valleys, most of the precipitation fell as rain further down, for example in Lienz. This resulted in mudslides, numerous cellar floods, flooded traffic routes, etc. Toppled electricity pylons and damage to power lines caused by broken branches and trees led to regional power outages. According to ORF, 1200 households in East Tyrol alone were still without power on Tuesday. Many transport links in the snow-covered regions are or were interrupted, including many smaller roads as well as major axes such as the Felbertauernstraße or train services on the Brenner Pass. Even the Brenner highway northbound was partially closed at the weekend due to the risk of avalanches.

The amount of precipitation was also extreme in terms of statistics. At some stations, particularly in Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol, new records were set for the 3-day precipitation total. There were fewer new snow records, as the snow line fluctuated considerably in some places and there was also a lot of rain at lower altitudes. But there were also new records for the statistics: in Umhausen in Ötztal, which is actually quite far away from the main ridge, around 80 cm of fresh snow fell at the weekend. The previous 24-hour record at this station was 45cm. You can find out more about the records in Austria at ZAMG. There were also some considerable amounts of precipitation in Switzerland (especially the Upper Engadine), but this time they could not quite keep up with the more easterly core areas in South and East Tyrol and Carinthia

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What's next?

As the oracle has already reported, it's still snowing today (Wednesday) in the regions that have already received a lot of snow. At the first alarm, an impressive amount of snow has penetrated impressively far to the north (about 60cm on the Nordkette is really not usual in südstau). This time, too, it is snowing as far as the Inn Valley, but most of the precipitation is falling in the south.

This is partly thanks to a blocking area of high pressure in western Russia, which ensures that Atlantic disturbances cannot continue directly to the east, but have to move out of the way. In the current case, towards the Mediterranean. This high pressure area will gradually weaken over the next few days. The low-pressure influence will continue to dominate until the weekend with clouds and some snowfall from time to time, although the really heavy snowfall will be over by today. From today's perspective, it will be sunny from the west on Sunday and then also in the Eastern Alps from Monday at the latest. If you take a look at the forecast for next week, you can see a relatively warm, sunny period with a moderate south-westerly flow.

As far as the basis for the rest of the ski winter is concerned, the situation has improved significantly in purely quantitative terms after the extremely dry November. However, those who don't have any snow yet will probably have to wait a while longer. If you have a lot of snow now, you can shovel out the car and then enjoy yourself. Anyone who has been touched rather than hit hard by the accumulation should bear in mind that there is now a widespread problem with old snow: If there was some before the snowfall, it is now covered, but not snowed in meters deep. The former snow surface has been transformed and is now a critical weak layer that winter sports enthusiasts can easily trigger. (See the LWD Tirol blog entry on this)

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This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

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