UKC

Just to keep everyone on their toes - we will be skiing soon. Perhaps very soon, and I have an intuition, feeling the weather over the last few months, that it is going to be a good one.

2011-11-17
It's cold in the Eastern Alps - hard work scratching the frost off the car in the mornings (at 500 m where I live).

No low lying snow yet, which is good so the ground gets a good deep freeze before the first massive snow dump: that should be coming soon. Fair bit of snow already above 2000 m.

Plenty of ground water (but not too much) so the icefalls should start to form soon.

Of course, at midday it is still fine for rock climbing in the sun (total blue sky and no wind) until about 4 p.m.
And the autumn colours ... sometimes feel I have died and gone to heaven already.

In reply to Erstwhile:

The massive downpours that are flooding southern Italy didn't make it up to the Alps, so we are still waiting for our first big snow dump, which they now forecast for early December.

In reply to Erstwhile: Thanks for the updates, hoping things shape up in the Julian alps for January

In reply to Erstwhile: Good snow above 2500 m in the southen Wallis, and ice falls staring to freeze up nicely.

In reply to Erstwhile: Watching the weather thread on snowheads.com suggests lots of forecasters are expecting the first big falls towards the end of next week. There's a bit high pressure area sat over eastern europe that's pushing all the weather systems away, but they seem to think that'll shift next week.

In reply to Erstwhile: I'm in the Dolomites mid December so watching the weather reports as there is no snow around currently. Last year it was great, and very cold.

In reply to Bellie:

A sheepish "Baaaaaa" is in order.
Since my optimistic first post on this thread everything has gone completely wonky. The night cold has persisted but a very marked temperature inversion set in making even the snow cannons useless. Our forecast snow dump didn't, and it was supposed to be snowing today - can't say I noticed it while rock climbing in the sun this afternoon ...
The icefalls are slowly starting to form (even with some thin ascents) but they still need a big beefy freeze to shape up properly.

I did a 380m rock route on Sunday and got a bit sunburned!

In reply to Erstwhile:

Work up this morning to see snowy summits and Alpenglow - winter at last!

It snowed yesterday above 1200 m - not massive but a start. Wednesday a little more is forecast and then Friday a more substantial dump, so the Dolomites are now open for white sports.

(Having said that, last weekend a group manged to get avalanched in the Brenta Dolomites, with one hurt quite bad. It was a slab avalanche produced by recent wind drifting. Amazing effort !)