Alpine resorts: a lot of precipitation in the coming days

After a quiet period with warm temperatures and little precipitation, a change follows today. The next few days promise to be quite wet in the Alps, resulting in a serious layer of fresh snow at altitude here and there. In the Northern Alps, a föhnwind rages through the valleys and over the peaks. You can read all about the weather in the mountains in this weather report.

After a lot of fresh snow in September, it has been especially dry and warm in the Alps in October. The Austrian weather service ZAMG even reports that October 2022 will most likely become one of the three warmest in the 256-year measurement history. Especially if you look at the coming days: it stays warm. In addition, in the southern regions, there is practically no precipitation. In Osttirol and Carinthia it is extremely dry.

In the coming days, the calm, dry weather is done. A strong low pressure area causes a lot of precipitation, especially in the western Alps. Unfortunately, due to a south-westerly current, it remains quite warm, bringing the snow line between 2300 and 3000 meters in altitude. So, white villages are not in it, it becomes especially very wet. In addition, today and tomorrow the Northern Alps will have to deal with a blow-dry wind from the southwest. It blows both in the valleys and on the mountain and raises the mercury and the zero degree limit considerably.

Unfortunately, it will not be really cold in the Alps for the time being. For that reason, the snow line also lags well above 2500 meters. The predicted precipitation therefore only results in high-altitude snow, especially in Switzerland and France. In Zermatt, for example, up to 40 cm of snow can fall from an altitude of 2900 meters and in Chamonix Mont-Blanc about 35 cm from an altitude of 2800 meters. For Saas-Fee about 30 cm has been predicted from 2900 meters altitude and in Tignes about 25 cm from that height.