It's nuking once again across the Alps, with the bullseye on the northern French and Western Swiss Alps. Today (Tuesday) will be deep and epic, with free refills all day. Tomorrow (Wednesday) should be amazing too, with skies partially clearing and hopefully new terrain. Another strong and long-duration storm arrives early Thursday and pounds the Alps through Saturday AM. Snow levels will be a bit higher with this one but mid and upper elevations will get nailed.

Another 15 - 30 + cms will fall today in the favored regions of the French (Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Hautes-Alps) and Swiss (Vaud, Wallis) Alps. Lower totals as you move farther south in the French Alps, but the western Austrian Alps, especially the Tirol and Vorarlberg regions, will see their heaviest snow of the storm on Tuesday, with 15 - 30 cms. Totals drop off the farther east you head in the Austrian Alps also.

Snow wraps up early Wednesday morning from west to east and the sun may even poke its way out of the clouds in the before noon.

Ok, onto the next storm. Models have remained consistent with the upper-level changes I discussed yesterday, with a storm that doesn't dig as far south, resulting in less warm air making into the Alps and a longer period of westerly vs. southwesterly winds. These changes are overall beneficial to most regions, though not all, and you can read about it in more detail here.  

This storm will be warmer than the current event, with snow levels peaking around 1800m on Thursday, falling to 1500m Thursday night, and then down to 1200m on Friday as a strong cold front arrives. Snow levels will be a bit lower in the central and eastern Swiss Alps and the Austrian Alps as well.

Unlike the previous two storms, this will be a long-duration event with moderate to heavy snow fall throughout, with totals piling up over the course of three days. The northern French and western Swiss Alps will be favored once again. A whopping 35 - 70 cms is expected in the favored regions of the French and Swiss Alps, at mid mountain, and even bigger numbers are expected at upper elevations due to the marginal temperatures to start the storm. We'll likely see some rain down low, and therefore some sharp cutoffs in snow totals with elevation. 

The storm is looking a bit stronger for the western Austrian Alps as well, due to a longer period of northwest winds. Again, Tirol and Vorarlberg will be favored with 25 - 50 cms of new snow, but the rest of the northern side of the Austrian Alps should see 15 - 30 cms as well. Check out the snow forecast from the European model below. 

The storm will bring moderate to heavy snow most of the time from Thursday through Saturday morning, with the heaviest period likely Thursday night through Friday night. 

We should see a short break in the action early next week but the models do have more storms around around Monday (4th) night or Tuesday (5th) morning. There is some disagreement on the track with this next storm so I'll save the details for a future post.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow! 

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow

 

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