Mt. Etna is one of the most active volcanoes on earth, with fiery lava flows occuring regularly. In the Winter, Etna is often blanketed with snow. This volcano is home to two ski resorts, Mount Etna Nord Piano Provenzana Linguaglossa and Mount Etna Sud Rifugio Sapienza Nicolosi, which are about to be crushed with snow. You can see where the stratovolcano is located in Sicily below.

The same storm that brought moderate snow totals to the western Italian Alps will be the source of the snow in Sicily. The upper level system moves off the coast of Italy, then southeast into the Mediterranean and skirts south of the island of Sicily. This track will stream eastern Atlantic tropical moisture into Sicily for the next few days, and combine with cold air from Siberia. Below you can see the moisture stream from the Atlantic stretching across northern Africa and into Sicily.

You can see the cold air originatin in Siberia below.

The models are showing some mind boggling snow totals. The European model, for example, shown below, is predicting up to 2.5 meters by Friday! Woh! 

The American model, not shown, has up to 1.5 meters during this period. The bottom line is that from today through Friday it will be dumping on Mount Etna. If any readers live in Sicily or know someone who does, I would love to hear about the conditions there. Even better if they try to ski/ride during or after this period.

I am excited to see some pictures of this stratovolcano with a new 1.5 - 2.5 meter thick blanket!

Thanks for reading the forecast. Follow me @lstone84 on Instagram to track and chase storms all Winter long!