A cold front brings brief cooling with fresh snow at the end of the week. Possible change in the general weather situation next year.
The current situation
We don't want to waste too many words on the Christmas tragedy, weather-wise, of course. Incidentally, it wasn't climate change that was to blame, but a cyclonic south-westerly situation. For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that record temperatures fell in many places on Christmas Eve, in Munich it was over 20 degrees, the warmest place in Austria was Brand in Vorarlberg with over 18 degrees. Compared to that, it's now almost wintry again, the T-shirt weather is over and proper jackets are advisable. It's not cold, but at least it's raining. Like most other recent weather events, we have disturbances embedded in Atlantic lows to thank for this.
The outlook
Basically, things will continue in exactly the same way: a cold front from the northwest could be interesting, which should reach the Alpine region on Thursday or in the night to Friday. Who can expect fresh snow? Exactly, the northwest. It might even be enough to lure our colleague the oracle out from behind the Christmas tree, we'll have to wait and see, and the north-east should also get at least enough to cover up the slushy patches on the slopes. You should keep an eye on the snow line so that you don't stumble over it unexpectedly when treeskiing. It will only snow in the valleys if you're lucky and it will be warmer again at the weekend and, from today's perspective, reasonably sunny. In the longer term, a possible change in the general weather situation from the turn of the year is within the realms of possibility. The models increasingly see a strengthening Azores High and an expanding wedge over the Atlantic, or over Central Europe. The latter would not be ideal for winter, the former more so. In any case, the westward drift would be slowed down for the time being. The polar vortex split mentioned last week has taken place and is causing extremely low temperatures in Siberia and parts of Canada. If the whole thing shifts a little, the polar cold could still reach us. However, the models don't really want to believe that at the moment.
