Europe Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 1 year ago December 1, 2023
Two More Days of Heavy Snow and Then a Short Break
Summary
Ridiculous totals continue to be reported out of the Alps in France and Switzerland, and we have two more days of snow yet to come. Temperatures will begin to fall today and turn lower elevation rain back to snow. Much of the southern side of the Alps, that has been left out of the fun, will finally see a significnt snowfall.
Short Term Forecast
Is this deja vu? Report of up to 50 cms in the French and Swiss Alps yesterday, deepest in the Valle d'Aosta. Two more days of snow on top thanks to this storm, and the cold front is already crossing the Alps.
The models have continued the trend with a more southerly track, and also now have the upper-level system splitting. This will benefit the southern Alps. At the same time, the storm is moving a bit slower, so totals in the western and northern Alps will still be impressive.
There aren't really any changes to the snow totasls since yesterday, but I will highlight the regions in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria that will benefit from this recently less common storm track.
Most of the storms over the last month originated to the north or northwest of the Alps, and featured north of northwest winds. These storms delivered huge totals to the northern side of the Alps, and are called Nordstau and Nordweststau respectively. Due to the topography of the Alps and downsloping, the southern side of the Alps receives little snow during these storms.
This time around, the storm will track far enough south to bring heavy snow to the southern Alps. This storm track will result in south-southwest winds that will favor the southern Alps, as well as a convergence zone over the inner Swiss Alps and and southern Austrian Alps. Combined, this will produce some impressive totals over the next few days. Check out the south-southwest winds today (Friday).
And you can see the winds out of the northwest on the northern side of the Alps, and winds ouf of the southwest on the southern side of the Alps, converging to produce enahnced snowfall.
The combined result of these will be very heavy snow in this region for the next two days, as you can see in the European snow forecast below.
Once this storm wraps up on Saturday night, we'll have a break through Monday morning. Another system is on tap for early next week, arriving Monday evening. This looks like a moderate storm favoring the French Alps through Wednesday.
Extended Forecast
In the long-range, the models show another moderate storm for the end of the week.
Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!
Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow
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