Europe Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 11 months ago January 16, 2024
Heavy Snow Begins Early Wednesday Morning
Summary
The next big storm is on our doorstep. Heavy snow returns to the western Alps in France, Switzerland and Italy, with moderate snow in Austria. Snow levels will rise during this storm but a cold front will knock them back down towards the end bringing a lower density snow to close out the event. We could be in for quite a long dry stretch beyond that.
Short Term Forecast
A major storm is on track this week, starting early Wednesday morning and continuing through Friday. There is some model disagreement on totals, but it's a matter of deep or really deep. The European model has a wide area of 30 - 60 cms in the western Alps, with a few areas approaching 80 cms. The American and Canadian models show 50 - 100 cms across much of the western Alps with favored areas seeing up to 1.2 m.
With more models favoring the stronger storm, it's hard to ignore. Thus, I think 50 - 100 cms is reasonable for the favored areas of the western Alps, including the Valle d'Aosta in Italy, Chamonix, and parts of the Savoie/Haute Savoie/Isere in France. For the rest of the western Alps, from Isere north through western Switzerland, 30 - 60 cms are expected. Totals drop off further south and east, with 20 - 40 cms for much of the southern French Alps and central Swiss Alps. Finally, the eastern Swiss and western Austrian Alps will see much less snow, likely in the 10 - 25 cm range. Some snow is expected for the upper elevations of the Pyrenees during this storm as well.
The latest forecast from the Canadian model is shown below.
Snow levels rise as the storm begins and that will continue through Wednesday afternoon, peaking between 1800 - 2000 m. Things start to cool off Wednesday night with snow levels falling to 1500 - 1700 m by Thursday morning. Snow levels continue to drop Thursday night as heavy snow continues, reaching 900 - 1100 m by morning. This would be a period of low-density snow to close out the storm, resulting in great powder conditions on Friday.
There may be some lingering showers on Friday but accumulations will be minor. The rest of the weekend then looks dry.
Extended Forecast
Most of the models show a ridge building in over Spain that will keep the storm track to the north. One model shows the storm track getting far enough south for some rain and snow early next week, but that is the outlier right now. Below is the upper-level pattern for the five days ending January 25th and January 30th. You can see the ridge in southwestern Europe dominating the weather during this time, directing the storm track north of the Alps and Pyrenees.
Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!
Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow
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