Europe Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 1 month ago December 22, 2024
Multi-Day Mega-Dump Underway
Summary
Snow has developed across the northern French Alps and quickly spread farther east into Switzerland and Austria. There are no signs of weakening with this storm and the northern/western Alps will get pumped through Tuesday night.
Short Term Forecast
The big one is finally here. Big snow, big wind, big avalanche danger, little visibility, and big pow days. This is a classic strong Nordwestau and it will be with us through Wednesday.
There really are very few changes to discuss from previous discussions regarding this storm. We are still looking at an extended period of very heavy snowfall in the northern and western Alps, starting last night and persisting through Tuesday. The heavy snow may taper to snow showers a bit sooner than previously expected but it won’t affect snow totals much, if at all.
The strongest winds are expected on Sunday and Sunday night in the French Alps, Sunday through Monday morning for most of the Swiss Alps, and Sunday night through Monday night in the Austrian Alps.
In a recent development, a very weak lobe of low pressure is going to swing counter clockwise around the large upper level low now south of the Alps, bringing a period of light snow to the eastern Alps from Thursday afternoon through Friday morning. The Austrian Alps should see a quick 5 - 15 cm from this system.
Below is the final snow forecast from the high-res WRF model before the storm. The favored areas in the northern French Alps, Swiss Alps, and western Austrian Alps are still on track to see 1 - 1.5 m of snow, with parts of the Swiss Alps exceeding 1.5 m.
The highly discussed anomalous ridge will then dominate the weather in most of Europe through the end of the month.
Extended Forecast
We could see the ridge start to weaken enough for a storm to graze the eastern edge of the Alps after New Year’s. However, the models then show the ridge rebuilding into Western Europe, keeping any storms out until later in the first week of the new year.
My next post will be on Monday.
Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!
Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow
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