I hope you've been enjoying the sunshine, everyone, as well as the impressive early-season snowpack across much of the Alps. In the northern and western Alps, this has been one of the best starts to the season in years. Even on the southern side of the Alps, while the snow depths aren't particularly impressive, there is decent and consistent coverage across all elevations. The Pyrenees have had a handful of storms as well, resulting in some solid powder skiing at times. 

We will have more sunshine and warmth for the early part of this week. Sunshine and warm temperatures will persist through Tuesday. On Wednesday, the ridge will start to break down and retreat to the west, allowing storms from the north to drop down through central Europe. The big question is how far west will these storms track. Over the last few days, the models have presented three scenarios.

1. Eastern storm track; minor impacts overall with the snow mainly falling in the eastern Austrian Alps
2. Western storm track: significant impacts to most of the northern Alps, including France, Switzerland, and Austria
3. Central storm track: significant snow for the Austrian and eastern Swiss Alps, lesser impacts for France

The lack of consistency in the deterministic models has been concerning, with each of the three major models showing multiple different scenarios over the last few days. The ensembles have been a bit more consistent, keeping a significant storm in most runs that would bring widespread snow to a large part of the Alps starting in the middle of next week.

Let's first take a look at a few of the scenarios the models have shown in the last few days. First, is the more easterly storm track, with most of the snow in the eastern Austrian Alps.

Next up is the more westerly track, with heavy snow across all of the northern Alps.

Finally, the middle of the road track is shown below.

The heaviest snow would fall in the Austrian Alps but part of the Swiss Alps would get deep as well, with less snow in the western Swiss and French Alps. Now let's take a look at the differences in the upper-level patterns that would produce these three scenarios.

These seemingly subtle differences will determine where it gets deep next week.

We'll be in wait-and-see mode for the next day or two, while the models sort this out. The greatest odds for significant snow next week are in the Austrian Alps, but let's give it a few more days before we start talking specifics. 

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow