Europe Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 1 year ago November 18, 2023
Deep Day in the Austrian Alps, Followed by Rain
Summary
Snow totals are impressive across the western Austrian Alps over the last two days. A warm storm will impact the Alps later tonight through Sunday, bringing rain and high elevation snow. Just a quick break before the next system arrives Monday, and then a bigger storm possible next weekend.
Short Term Forecast
The Austrian Alps are looking great after this last storm, with deep snow down at low elevations and mega deep snow up high. The next storm has trended a bit stronger, unfortunately, since snow levels will be rather high. The action continues early next week with a moderate storm and then another major storm is likely next weekend.
Our next storm moves in quickly, tonight, and with a strong high pressure to the west, warm air will be funneled into the Alps causing snow levels to rise. Precipitation will start out as snow but quickly turn over to rain. The storm will bring the most moisture to the Swiss and Austrian Alps, and snow levels will climb to over 2400 m and 2100 m, respectively. A bit of deja vu with a gut punch of rain after a big snow storm. About 1.5 - 3 cms of rain is expected with this storm, with a little bit of dense snow very high.
Below is the total precipitation expected from Saturday night through Monday morning.
We'll start to cool off later on Sunday but there won't be much moisture left at that time. Another storm is aimed Central Europe starting as early as Monday afternoon. We will have a bit of a different storm track with this one, as part of the upper level energy will dive south to the west of the Alps.
Some of the models are taking this storm a bit less far west, as of the last day or two, which would bring less impacts to the Pyrenees, and more precipitation to the Alps. Let's give the models a another day or so to sort this discrepancy out.
Extended Forecast
The long-range models are still showing a major storm towards the end of next week, around the 24th to the 26th. Right now, this storm has the potential to bring over a half meter of snow across the Alps. Over the last twenty-four hours, the models take this storm a bit farther east, which would cut down on the impacts, but still produce a significant storm. Below is the potential upper level pattern on the 25th. You can see a huge, strong, and deep upper-level area of low pressure over Europe.
I will keep watching this 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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