WeatherBlog 9 2019/20 | Weekly sun update

On the contrary: January so far has been significantly sunnier and warmer than the long-term average, especially at the mountain stations. There were always warm days in the valleys when the cold air was cleared out by freshening winds - in the north typically light Föhn winds with a SW flow. Otherwise, it will continue to shiver in the tough inversion.

Outlook

The whole thing will continue unchanged until Friday: zonal flow, frontal zone far to the north, high pressure influence in the Alpine region. If it's boring long enough, you're happy about the smaller changes, so now the more or less exciting message of this WeatherBlog: It's going to be cloudy on Saturday! It's even snowing a little in the north! We have a cold front to thank for this, which will slowly become active in the western Alps on Friday afternoon and then move on to the eastern Alps in the night to Saturday. As far as the amounts are concerned, the WeatherBlog is not particularly confident that it will be enough for a report from colleague Orakel (the threshold for this is known to be 30cm), but maybe we'll all be surprised. In any case, it's likely to get colder, although that's not too much of a stretch given the current situation in January.

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500hPa geopotential and ground pressure, northern hemisphere, Wednesday 15.1.20. Zonal flow over the Atlantic, high pressure dominates the Alpine region.

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Medium-term

On Sunday, the unusually unsunny spell will be over relatively quickly. In the east, it will take a little longer for the clouds to clear, but in the western Alps it will be mostly sunny again by mid-morning. On Monday, it's likely to be mostly sunny everywhere again.

Apart from the variety in the actual daily weather pattern (sunshine and a few clouds or even the odd snowflake now and then), the coming days can also be a bit of a surprise on a large scale. The flow will generally become more meridional with the trough bringing the cold front. The continental high in the east will block the trough from moving on, at least in the short term, so that it will instead drip into the Mediterranean on Sunday, at least according to current model forecasts. To the north of this cut-off trough, the high in the west and east will form a high-pressure bridge at the start of the new week and, in combination with the small low, create a high-over-low situation.

A little more clouds for a short time last Saturday in Valais — Slightly more clouds in Valais last Saturday

LH

The sun may continue to shine in the Alps, or shine again, but the general weather situation will be different. The crystal ball suggests that things will swing back towards a zonal westerly flow from the middle of next week and we're just hoping that this will be the wet version of westerly weather with a slightly more southerly frontal zone and not a return to the current situation...