Europe Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 1 year ago November 17, 2023
Another Big Storm, Bullseye On the Austrian Alps
Summary
A strong storm is over the Alps today, with a track favoring Austria and Switzerland. Heavy snow will fall down to low elevations for the next few days and the resorts will be in a great position as more begin to open up. Without much of a break, a weaker storm will pass to the north, keeping showers going. Next week, yet another storm is possible, with a different track than the storms of late.
Short Term Forecast
Another major storm is underway, with heavy snow falling across the Austrian and Swiss Alps. Snow is falling in the northern French Alps too, but overall this system will favor the Swiss and especially the Austrian Alps.
The Tirol and Vorarlberg regions in western Austria still look like the winners with this storm, and should expect an additional 30 - 60+ cms through Saturday night. As always, higher totals are possible at upper elevations.
Across much of the Swiss Alps 20 - 40+ cms is expected, with the highest totals in the eastern part of the country. Chamonix and the Haute-Savoie region in the northern French Alps along the Swiss border will fare best in France, with about 8 - 16 cms of additional snow.
This is a great storm overall and will help Austria catch up to France in terms of snow, and set the region up well for the opening of resorts in the next several weeks.
Things will quiet down briefly but another storm will pass to the north Saturday night through Sunday. A ridge to the west will pump in some warmer air while this storm passes north of the Alps, raising snow levels above 2100 m. There isn't a whole lot of moisture with this one so the damage below those elevations should be limited while some dense snow falls up high.
Moving forward, an intense jet stream across the North Atlantic will cause a storm to dig south across the Pyrenees and into the Mediterranean next week. This isn't generally a great pattern for the Alps, and right now the models haven't figured out exactly how this one will pan out. Once this upper-level low drops south of Spain, it will cut off and then linger for potentially several days. These cut-off lows are notoriously difficult for the models to forecast, as they get separated from the prevailing flow in the atmosphere.
The Pyrenees should get some snow out of this one, but I need to see the models come into better agreement before discussing totals and storm details.
Extended Forecast
The long-range models are starting to pick up on a major storm towards the end of next week, around the 24th. This has the potential to be a prolonged Nordstau/Nordweststau event with massive totals. This is one I will be watching very closely over the coming days.
Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow! Follow me @lstone84 on Instagram to track and chase storms all winter long!
Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow
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