Snow Forecast Summary - February 28th 2008

A definite change in the weather is in store for the next 7 to 10 days.


The unusually warm and Spring-like conditions of late are starting to give way to something a bit more seasonal. The coming weekend should be cooler than last weekend's t-shirt conditions, with widespread cloud bringing snow at altitude. The Northern alpine areas will see the best of this first band of precipitation, with an initial snow line around 2,000 metres falling to 1,500 or below by late Sunday. Snowfalls are unlikely to be huge but should be enough to freshen the pistes up nicely in many areas.

Further South, the likelihood of snow at the weekend is lower but temperatures should still be falling.

Incoming

From Tuesday onward, there appears now to be a high probability of widespread, decent snowfall to low altitude as temperatures drop significantly. We would stress that this is still some way ahead, but it's looking promising... Austrian resorts, in particular, could be seeing significant accumulations through the second half of next week. Most of the Central and Northern Alpine areas are currently in the firing line for this one so keep an eye...

One aspect of snowfall that interests me is the relationship between snowfall and location, rather than just looking at resort height.

There are one or two good sites that give good historical info by location. I have not seen anything that brings the locations together in terms of "streams" of weather. I am thinking of the consistency of weather in a line of resorts.

Hi Dave,

We plan to add historical data to our snow report pages in the near future. We have a lot going on right now but hope to have that in place by the end of next month.

As for the correlation between resorts... I suspect that there actually isn't that much; snow conditions can vary hugely from one valley to the next.

Actual snowfall depends so much on wind-speed, direction, air humidity and so on - let alone temperature - all of which vary immensely even between very closely located resorts. Mountain weather patterns are quite extreme examples of chaotic systems, where a small change in a single variable can have huge effects on the overall pattern.

Would make an interesting study if you had the time though... 8)