Italy - why always the bridesmaid in its snow record?

A snowHead

I have been wondering this for the past few years?

Even in times of good snowfalls ( like NOW!! ) why doe'nt Italy get any? Has it to do with it being south of the main alpine mountain range.

Scientific and anecodotal reasons please.

A snowHead

I beleive it has to do with the way snow clouds form an move. As i understand, snow arrives either from Russia and most of it falls in Austria or from Scandinavia and then it mostly fall s over France/Swiss. Italy can get the most snow ithe clouds take a detour through the south-east Europe (i.e Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia) and that doesn't happen too often

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

hibernia,

Talked to guides in Monterosa who said that the area was fed by weather from the south and it comes up from the bay of Genoa. This is a different feed than, say France which explains why Chamonix and Courmayeur can have different snow levels. The Chamonards refer to this as they are often aware which valley have the better snow and why.

Only hearsay but I would expect this source to have foundation because thats his business.
And we have often juggled betwen Chamonix,Courmayuer, Cervinia and Monterosa and found this to be true at times.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Yes Speaking about Courmayeur at least, it generally needs a souterly feed - you'll sometimes/often see a LP system fotm in the N Med (or move in across Spain) and move east (it's not unknown for one to appear in the Adriatic and move west), and that's what's generally needed for snow in Italy - southern feeds. Anything from the North tends to cause foehn winds which are not what's wanted. People in Courmayeur say that ifd it's good in Courmayeur it's bad in Chamonix and vice versa. I think places like Cervina can do better because of the altitude - it's better for two reasons, firstly it's colder that high up generally, and secondly there's less foehn effect warming higher up with the higher, drier air being more apparent further down the valley. The latter effect may be minimal at times, though.

This year (and I've never paid as much attention before this year, so the variation in patterns may not quite be like this), the European HP has forecd many of the LPs further south and kept them weak. It has also diverted most of the northerly LPS further east. Also the E & NE winds have (as stated above) brought snow to the East, but again Italy's sheltered by the intervening range.

Help!!

Italy - why always the bridesmaid in its snow record?

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