The models have trended farther south with the storm track for the following ten days, putting the Alps in a good position to see snow from several quick-hitting storms through the end of the month. This pattern will favor the French Alps and the southern Alps in Italy and Switzerland, and the Pyrenees will get in on the action, too.

As mentioned, the first of these storms is already underway and will continue to impact the region through Thursday. The focus will be on the southern French Alps until Thursday morning when a wind shift to the west/west-northwest will bring heavier snow to the northern French Alps, as well as the Swiss and western Austrian Alps. Snow totals through Thursday are shown below.

We should dry out for a bit from Thursday night through Saturday before the next storm arrives late Saturday night. This should be a quick-hitting storm that will be over by Monday morning but will pack a solid punch.

This storm will move in from the west, but a piece of energy will dip south of the Alps on the approach. At the onset, this will bring a period of south/south-southwest winds that will favor the southern Alps in Italy and Switzerland. The French Alps also do pretty well with winds that have a southwest component. 

Below is an early look at expected snow totals from this system.

We will then see a few more fast-moving storms through Thursday, with not much break in between. You can see this in the GIF below showing the precipitation type during each of these events. 

Most of the models bring a ridge back to Western Europe at the end of the month, but only for a day or two. A storm or two may drop down from the northwest to start February but the strength of these storms is unclear at this time. The models hint at a strong ridge developing over western Europe later in the first week of February but we don't need to worry about that yet. 

My next post will be on Thursday.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow

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Regions of the Alps