WeatherBlog 6 2023/24 | Weather change within reach

Current situation and outlook

The new year has started more or less as the old one ended. A few centimetres of fresh snow from New Year's Eve have at least visually improved the mostly uninspiring snow situation a little, but not much. As usual, we're in a brisk westerly current, with small waves embedded in it from time to time, bringing clouds or a few snowflakes or raindrops - just like at the turn of the year. This will continue today (Wednesday) and tomorrow, with the weather changing during the course of the day on Friday. The weather map on the right shows a bird's eye view of the northern hemisphere. Over the Atlantic, the current is still very zonal today (west-east direction) without any major waves. In the coming days, however, a prominent wedge will form off the European Atlantic coast and a trough will form downstream of it, i.e. near us (see map below).

On Friday, it will initially be foehn-like, but it will start to snow from the south-west during the course of the day. It will probably remain dry in the north. There is likely to be a decent genoa low at the weekend. In combination with the still rather south-westerly flow at altitude, this has the potential for quite heavy snowfall. We hope to receive a report from the PowderOracle in due course.

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500hPa geopotential and ground pressure GFS, 3.1.2024, northern hemisphere view. Very zonal flow over the Atlantic = westerly position.

meteociel.fr

2023: way too warm

It has been clear since the end of November that 2023 would be the warmest year in recorded history globally. The EU climate service Copernicus has summarised this here. Of course, there are always local and regional deviations from the global scale. A global record does not necessarily mean that it was this hot everywhere in 2023. However, this is true for Austria at least: The Geosphere (formerly ZAMG) states that 2023 is on a par with 2018 and was therefore the warmest year for at least 256 years (start of measurements). Looking only at the higher altitudes, 2023 was the third warmest year in the somewhat shorter time series. In Germany too, the DWD's climate data portal shows that 2023 was the warmest year since the time series began in 1881. In Switzerland, 2023 is just behind the previous year's record in second place in the time series.

Last December was also very mild in the Alpine region. The precipitation is also worth mentioning statistically: Austria hasn't had such a wet December in over 100 years, and in Switzerland it was also "very wet". The fact that this abundant precipitation unfortunately often did not fall in a desirable aggregate state for skiing should not have escaped anyone's notice.

500hPa geopotential and ground pressure, GFS, 5.1.2024. The flow is much more wavy than recently. Distinctive trough over Europe
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meteociel.fr

Snow depth Pitztal

Finally, let's take another quick look at the snow depth at the often-cited Pitztal Glacier station: the time series is much shorter, but we realise that there are records here too! Since around mid-December, the green line of the current season corresponds to the time series maximum. The increase in snow depth from the Christmas storm is also clearly visible. We hope that there will be a good supply next weekend and that the curve will continue to develop like this! The station location on the main Alpine ridge is not so bad for the coming weather situation, although the centre of precipitation will probably be further south.