The last storm played out as expected, with 5 - 15 cm on the northern side of the Swiss and French Alps and 10 - 30 cm in the western Italian Alps. Below are a few pictures from the action on Tuesday.

Snow showers are possible on Wednesday night through Thursday in the eastern Swiss and Austrian Alps but no more than a few cm are expected. 

We should dry out from Thursday night through Sunday as the ridge finally crosses the region and moves off to the east. The long-awaited stronger storm moves in later this weekend. The models continue to disagree on the timing, which should be sometime between Sunday evening and early Monday morning. 

There remain some key differences in the upper-level pattern as the storm arrives as well, which will have a big impact on how this storm plays out. Overall the models still agree on a series of strong storms bringing several days of snow to the Alps, but exactly how this happens is still not clear. Given the differences in the models, I don't feel confident in the details and think it warrants another day or two of watching. 

For today I will show the snow forecast for the next ten days, which includes the storm cycle next week, from the deterministic and ensembles for the three major models.

The deterministic and ensemble forecasts from all three models show significant snow during this time, with the deepest totals in the western Alps. This cycle has the potential* to deliver 1-1.5 m over a wide area. Two of the three models show significant snow in the Pyrenees as well. Hopefully, the models become more aligned in the next few days so we can get a better idea of how this storm cycle will play out. 

Once this storm cycle winds down we should see a break around the start of the following week. The models generally show a ridge developing over southwest Europe. This would warm things up and put the storm track north of the Alps and Pyrenees. The ridge is far enough south that it wouldn't take too much movement to get some storms into the mountains. but it's too early to get into that. 

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!

Next post on Thursday.

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow