A strong ridge of high pressure will keep storms north and east of the Alps and Pyrenees for most of next week. Check out the GIF of the upper-level pattern below.

You can see the ridge, indicated by the red and orange colors, parked over central Europe until later this week. Once it weakens and moves off to the east, you can see an area of low pressure dropping into the Pyrenees from the northwest.

This should bring some rain and snow to the Pyrenees before it begins to move eastward into the Alps. The details of how this low pressure develops from that point forward will be key to the forecast. 

At the moment, the models show a heavy burst of precipitation for the Pyrenees, but without a source of cold air, snow levels will be high. The storm should then move in to the western Alps, with heavy precipitation arriving with southwesterly or southerly flow. This would favor the French Alps but again, with a lack of cold air snow levels would be fairly high. 

Here's how the European model has the first part of this storm playing out this weekend into early next week.

I expect changes to how this storm will unfold but this gives you an idea of the potential. We will have to wait until we get closer to this storm's arrival before we get a clearer picture. 

The models diverge substantially starting early next week, after the storm moves into southwest Europe. We could see a weaker storm drop down from the north giving the northern side of central/eastern Alps a round of snow. We definitely need more time to iron out the details of this period.

My next post will be on Tuesday.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow

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