WeatherBlog 8 2023/24 | Weather change!

Current situation and outlook

The end of the Bluebird-Powder Kaiser weather came gradually. Every day a little more wind and a little less homogeneous snow conditions, every day a little more drift snow problems and broken slush. Today, Wednesday, the gradual change has finally come to an end - the wind has picked up again and the current is turning south-westerly. This will make it foehn-like in the vulnerable valleys in the north and cloudy in the south. It's already quite wet in the western Alps (see PowderAlert!), albeit with a fairly high snow line. Further east, precipitation will set in during the course of the day south of the main Alpine ridge, while in the north it will remain dry for longer with foehn winds. Temperatures will also rise here, although not quite as much as further west. 

It will get colder again on Thursday with the arrival of a cold front from the NW. The precipitation will no longer be particularly heavy, but snow is likely to fall again at lower altitudes. The weather will calm down from Friday and the weekend is expected to be rather cool and sunny. This was also the case last weekend, but due to the ups and downs of the temperatures in combination with precipitation, wind and a frequently built-up old snow surface (surface rime), a significantly less relaxed avalanche situation is to be expected despite the similar weather pattern!

Fortunately, there are a number of detailed scientific studies on the slipperiness of ice that provide more in-depth information on the topic. A research team from the Netherlands (an important ice-skating nation!), for example, has devoted itself to the question of how ice skaters and ice behave towards each other on a molecular level - a "major scientific challenge" that they were fortunately able to solve: Ice friction (more or less the opposite of ice slipperiness) is low because the molecules can move quite well on the ice surface. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (together with colleagues from Holland, of course) have already come to similar conclusions. In contrast to the earlier assumption that a layer of water forms during ice skating due to the pressure of the blade and that it therefore slips, it is now assumed that this water forms due to the friction between the blade and the ice. Water promotes the slipperiness of ice, but is not a prerequisite, as the ice molecules can apparently move quite well at normal winter temperatures anyway. 

The WeatherBlog would still prefer snow! We would even offer to carry out empirical studies on the gliding behaviour of skis in dendritic snow crystals!