Europe Daily Snow
By Luke Stone, Forecaster Posted 1 month ago February 8, 2025
Retour d’est Remnants
Summary
Moderate to heavy snow will fall in the Pyrenees and southern Alps through Sunday as the remaining moisture from a departing Retour d’est gets wrung out by the mountains. This week will be mostly dry ahead of a possible storm next weekend. Overall, I don’t see any major storms in the next two weeks.
Short Term Forecast
The latest in a series of Retour d’est storms will bring a final round of snow to the Alps and Pyrenees this weekend, with solid additional totals. The Appenines and especially the high terrain in Sicily will see the biggest accumulations.
Some showers will be possible across the Alps this week as the former Retour d’est weakens and then lingers over eastern France. However, I do not expect much accumulation from this storm.
Later this week, the anomalously strong ridge over northern Europe will weaken, and the cut-off low responsible for the mid-week snow will finally be able to depart the region. We will return to a more normal east-to-west upper-level flow, and a queue storm will move into the Alps from the west.
The latest guidance shows a moderate storm next weekend favoring the northern Alps; early indications are that this storm could bring 15 - 30 cm of snow.
Extended Forecast
In the long range, there are some weak signals that ridging will return to southern Europe, extending the dry stretch for much of the northern Alps. There is still plenty of time for that to change, though, so don’t lose hope for the second half of February just yet.
My next post will be on Monday.
Thanks for reading the Europe Daily Snow!
Luke Stone
Forecaster, OpenSnow
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