Yet another week of changeable and unsettled weather here in the Northern Alps. It was cooler during the last week and we’ve had rain, sleet and snow at varying depths. The natural snow depths over 2200m remain good but below that, with the milder temperatures and virtually no overnight freezing, the snow is now very sparse. The quality of the snow has deteriorated too with the amount of water and wind over the last week.
After a cooler few days and surprising amounts of snow, we’ve enjoyed some good skiing in Val d'Isere as the freezing level dropped briefly down to 1000 metres. This helped keep some of the lower slopes going, although the amount of rain and wind has not helped the quality of snow.
The next few days
However temperatures over the next few days are very mild for this time of year and at around 2000 metres we can expect the temperature to get up to around 13 - 15 degrees from now until Monday.
On Tuesday the forecast is currently predicting light snowfall, up to 10 cm over around 1800 metres and freezing at around 1400 metres on Tuesday night.
Avalanche risk
After quite high winds and rain and snow over the last few days there has been avalanche instability through the Northern Alps, caused mainly by glide cracks and cold, dry slab avalanches usually triggered by the skiers. The current avalanche risk through most of the northern Alps is 3 out of 5 and there is a danger of wet snow avalanches. Take heed of the avalanche warnings in Val d'Isere before even considering venturing off piste.
This weeks chosen photo to accompany our snow report for the Northern Alps region is from Val d'Isere Ski Instructors and the video below from Verbier.
