It's been hard to believe recently, but the classic westerly weather pattern is one of the most common large-scale weather patterns in Europe. The current, long-awaited snowfall clearly shows why westerly weather is so important for winter in the Alps: reasonably widespread precipitation - and not too little of it.
Western weather in winter: lots of precipitation, but rather mild
Western weather in winter is usually rainy, but not particularly cold. Mid-altitudes are occasionally annoyed by precipitation that falls as rain rather than snow, even if everyone is happy to take what they can get at the moment. Western locations generally move mainly mild, maritime air masses. In addition, they can easily shift from a normally desirable north-westerly flow to a south-westerly one if a low moves slightly off track and the Alps end up on the front side of the trough. The southern Alps, which are logically performing poorly in terms of snow at the moment, would be happy about something like this, while in the north the Föhn would, well, "compress" the freshly fallen base."
Marius SchwagerTobi HuberArlberg, Austria
Marius SchwagerTobi HuberArlberg, Austria
As of Wednesday (7.12.2012), it looks as if the northern component will weaken every day for the foreseeable future. Friday is already set to be relatively mild, so anyone who, like the particularly Catholic Austrians, has the day off tomorrow to celebrate "Maria Empfängnis" should take advantage of this and think about which lift queue they would like to fight with like-minded people in. The weekend will be a little cooler, but it will remain rather cloudy. At the beginning of next week, there will be a changeover to the frontal weather discussed above.
