There's no way around it. A lot of rain is coming down on the massive amount of new snow that fell over the last week in the western Alps. While this snow can and will hold a lot of this moisture, concern for avalanches at higher elevations and mudslides at lower elevations is rising. Some of the lower elevation snow that fell will be lost, sadly. 

Fortunately, the jet stream will start to buckle tonight (Tuesday) and an upper-level low pressure with an associated cold front will reach the Alps. You can see the jet stream changes below, with the shift towards the end of the GIF.

This storm will take a more easterly track, favoring the Austrian Alps as the rain changes back to snow Tuesday night, as you can see in the American model snowfall map below.

Showers will linger through Wednesday night in the eastern Austrian Alps. Another low-pressure system is slated to arrive Thursday night that will again favor the Austrian Alps. Snow levels will bump up ahead of this storm, especially in the French and Swiss Alps, but will start falling again Thursday night and drop well below the bases by midday Friday. Snow will continue through Saturday morning, and then taper off west to east through Saturday night.

This will be a solid storm for the Austrian Alps, with 25 - 50 cms above 1800 m and 15 - 30 cms above 1500 m. Generally, the western side of the Austrian Alps will see the most snow, in the Vorarlberg and Tirol regions. 

The Swiss Alps will get in on the action too, with a large area of 15 - 30 cms above 1800 m, deepest on the northern side of the range. This will be a smaller event for the French Alps, but the northeastern portions will still see 10 - 20 cms with amounts dropping off to the south and west.

The American model seems to be handling this storm better, so below is the snow forecast for this period.

We should see somewhat of a break in the action on Sunday and Monday of next week, with only showers possible courtesy of a storm to the north. The next storm looks to arrive sometime between Monday evening and Tuesday morning, favoring the Swiss and Austrian Alps. This storm should drop down far enough west to bring some snow to the Pyrenees as well, which, outside of some showers midweek, will be snow-free during this time.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow! Follow me @lstone84 on Instagram to track and chase storms all winter long!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow