It snowed on Tuesday (a bit). When will it snow properly?
Finally, we can expect some snow next week!
I have been tracking the weather for the last month and looking for the indication that there might be some snow. So far any possibility of snow has been blocked by a giant high pressure sitting over the Atlantic, the UK and western Europe. There was a brief break in the high on Tuesday which produced some snow. But it was not very much in the French Alps. The high pressure is reasserting itself again this week, albeit with slightly cooler weather.
The high pressure has looked something like this for over 3 weeks now. The Times reported that the UK only had 2 hours of sunshine in the last 14 days!
About 7 days ago I noticed that the weather models pointed to a change from 18th November. But did not want to publish information about this since it could easily have gone away and been wrong. But for the last 7 days the weather models show the high pressure giving way a bit and allowing a more northerly and unsettled stream of weather to come in with potential for significant snow in the Alps.
And this change could continue all next week. Here is a chart for Thursday showing colder air streaming in from the North next Thursday
I am expecting that this change will bring a mix of weather types day by day. Meteo Blue and Meteo France are showing signifcant snowfall Monday night into Tuesday with much colder temperatures. So this could be the start of it.
After that all weather models suggest unsettled weather, but they disagree on how cold it will be. If it is Atlantic air it will be milder with snow only above 1800m and the snow rain limit going up and down. It is air moving down from the North like the chart above, then it will snow to lower altitudes.
However what we need is regular snowfall top ups over a few days to build the snow depths.
Will the resorts all open on time? None of them are publicly saying that they won’t, but we will have to wait and see if they can get ready.
The post It snowed on Tuesday (a bit). When will it snow properly? appeared first on Henry's Avalanche Talk.