WeatherBlog 8 2024/25 | New year, new weather

Current situation: Warm up high, cold in the valleys

Since the last PowderAlert, the sun has been shining brightly, as long as you're not sitting under the sometimes persistent blanket of fog. The air mass at altitude is very mild and some PG skiers have already felt "like it's April" on a ski tour. In addition to the temperatures, the thin snow pack in the Eastern Alps and increasingly melted out south faces also contributed to the less wintry feeling at higher altitudes. In the valleys, on the other hand, glistening frost crystals are growing thanks to the tough inversion and the temperatures remain frosty. The warm air further up lies like a lid on the lakes of cold air trapped in the valleys. 

Also caught up in the inversion is all the pollution that accumulates in the air. The air quality has become increasingly poor over the last few days and New Year's Eve, with its fine firework dust, caused the air pollution to spike again as usual. Valley residents can be glad that the cold, brown-yellow soup of air is expected to be cleared out tomorrow, Thursday. 

Two options in the crystal ball

The key question is how the Azores High will develop. Can it bulge, build a bridge to the high pressure over Greenland and thus block the westward drift (option 1)? Or will the wedge of the Azores High be overrun by the Atlantic frontal zone and the bridge to Greenland interrupted (option 2)? Option 1 would clear the way for cold polar air, which could slide east of the large area of high pressure on the most direct route to Central Europe. This would bring low temperatures and - with a bit of luck - also a nice northerly storm. Option 2, on the other hand, stands for rather mild, potentially stormy westerly weather. The images below show exemplary runs for next Tuesday in three different weather models. GFS is currently leaning towards option 2, ICON (known from the PG weather) towards option 1, ECMWF is somewhere in between.