The Alps and Pyrenees are in for another active stretch of weather this week. Three more storms are slated to bring several rounds of snow. The third storm later this week is trending farther east, with bigger impacts in the Alps than previously expected. 

There aren’t too many changes to the forecast for the next two storms in this cycle, which will impact the Alps and Pyrenees from Monday through Friday. The first is a fairly fast-moving cold storm that will generally bring 10 - 20 cm to the French Alps, 5 - 15 cm to the northern side of the Swiss and Austrian Alps, and with a longer period of south-southwest winds than initially expected, 25 - 50 cm to parts of the southern Alps of Switzerland and Italy. 

Below is the latest snow forecast from the European model. 

Still, this is a fast-moving storm that will be mostly over by the end of the day on Tuesday. The next storm will arrive shortly thereafter, later Tuesday night into Wednesday morning in the French Alps. This is a longer-duration storm with a warm front pushing across the Alps as the storm approaches. Snow levels shouldn’t climb as high as they did over the weekend, but some rain and mixed precipitation are expected at lower and even mid-mountain, especially on Wednesday. 

Snow levels will slowly fall starting on Wednesday night, and by Thursday night, a much colder airmass will be in place. This will result in great powder conditions on Friday as snow levels drop below 1000 m.

Winds will be out of the west-southwest to start transitioning to west-northwest later in the storm with the cold front. This will bring the highest snow totals to the French and Swiss Alps, with solid totals in the western Austrian Alps as well. Generally, 15 - 30 cm is possible for much of the French and Swiss Alps, with higher totals possible in the Savoie and Haute-Savoie regions in France. 

Below is the latest snow forecast from the European model for the second storm. 

Snow showers will linger through Friday before a fourth storm is possible Friday night. If this storm tracks farther east, it would have greater impacts in the Alps than the Pyrenees. There is still considerable model disagreement on the track of this final wave, so I’ll hold off on any additional details for now.

After the final system moves through later this week, a strong ridge will build over northwestern Europe and the northeast Atlantic. As I've been discussing over the last few days, one of the models already has the ridge much farther west, with a strong storm dropping down from the north into the Alps. The models do not agree on this scenario at the moment, though, so we'll have to give them more time to sort it out.

My next post will be on Wednesday.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow

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