It's nice when the weather models remain consistent in the final few days before a major storm. In my previous posts, I've gone into detail about the pattern and setup surrounding this massive storm, as well as a breakdown of timing and totals across the different regions of the Alps. Therefore, today's post will be a short summary of what's in store for the next five days.

Before that, though, I should mention that the Pyrenees will see solid totals from this behemoth of a storm as well. They won't match what falls in the Alps, but much of the northern side of the Pyrenees will see 25 - 50 cm through the middle of next week. Temperatures won't be as cold overall, with the core of the arctic air mass moving over the Alps, but snow levels will be between 500 - 1500 m for the majority of the storm. Below is the latest snow forecast from the high-resolution WRF model.

With a strong ridge initially to the west of Europe over the northeast Atlantic, an anomalously strong low area of low pressure will develop downstream. This is the classic Nordwestau setup, as the strength and location of the ridge are conducive to this downstream low-pressure development. You can read more about this type of storm here.  

Cold, moist air flowing from the North Sea into Europe will run into a huge barrier, the Alps, and be forced to rise. As it does so, all of this moisture will be wrung out of the air and will fall as snow. These high-amplitude upper-level features (high and low pressure) tend to stick around for longer periods of time than smaller ones, allowing this flow of cold, moist air into the northern Alps to persist for several days. This is the recipe for a storm to produce 1 - 2 m of snow in a short period of time. 

The timing and totals for this storm have remained the same since yesterday, so you can refer to yesterday's post for that information. Concerns remain about low visibility, strong winds, dangerous avalanche conditions, lift, terrain, and even road closures. Still, this will be a massive amount of fairly low density snow that will ski great, getting better through the duration of the storm. Below, I will leave you with one final snow map. This final forecast from the high-resolution WRF is for the second storm only, prior to it getting underway.

The ridge I've been discussing for days will move into western Europe early next week. The warm temperatures look to hold off until all the precipitation has ended. Further, the temperatures don't look to climb as high as initially thought, which will help keep the snow quality good. 

My next post will be on Sunday.

Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!

Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow

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Regions of the Alps