The Pyrenees will finally get in on the action with this next storm, after watching the western and eastern Alps alternate between huge dumps over the last three weeks. Thanks to a piece of energy splitting from a parent upper-level low, both the Pyrenees and the Alps will see some snow starting today (Tuesday). 

A solid period of winds out of the northwest, north, and northeast will bring substantial snowfall to the Pyrenees, especially the windward side. Snow levels will be around 1500 m. The heaviest snow will fall during the day Tuesday and Tuesday night in the Pyrenees, with light snow continuing on Wednesday.  

Expect 30 - 60 cms plus above 1800 m on the northern side of the Huate-Pyrenees, with amounts dropping off as you get closer to the border. Elsehwere, genrally 20 - 40 cms is likely across most of the range, heaviest on north facing slopes. 

Part of this upper-level system will impact the Alps too, as mentioned. This will result in decent totals from Tuesday evening through Wednesday afternoon, heaviest in the Austrian Alps. The Swiss Alps will see accumulating snow too but this one will mostly miss the French Alps. Expect 5 - 15 cms for much of the Austrian and Swiss Alps during this time. Check out the snow forecast from the European model below.

We'll have a quick break on Thursday while the next storm approaches from the north. The models have come into much better agreement on the upper-level track for this storm, with all of them going over to the more westerly track. This is good for the Alps, epecially in Austria and Switzerland. There will be a prolonged period of northwest winds, with many rounds of heavy snow as several upper-level waves swing through the Alps.

This extended Nordweststau has the potential to bring 1 - 2 + meters of snow to the Austrian Alps, over 1 m to the Swiss Alps. The French Alps shouldnt be totally left out, with the northern region in line to get around 25 - 50 cms.

The latter part of this storm is in the time frame where model accuracy drops off, but its quite possible this storm continues through the middle part of next week. It should also be noted that through most of this storm the temperatuires will be very cold, so the snow will be low density and really stack up. I'll leave the rest of the details for future posts.

There's not a lot to add to the long-range forecast, just that the models show the possibility of continued snow across the Alps thanks to this stubborn upper-level low. Even if this storm wraps up in the middle of next week, another storm is possible right after. This could be an incredibly cold and deep week to ten days.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow! Check out this short clip from yesterday in Utah, where 22" of snow fell in thirty-six hours. Follow me @lstone84 on Instagram to track and chase storms all winter long!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow