 Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Esta es mi gato no mi siento bien 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Thanks for that info nozawaonsen - should set things up for half term pretty nicely 
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nozawaonsen, while I sometimes struggle to understand the technical side of forecasting, I have learnt to love those tantalising winky smilies that ooze positivity and I will sleep well tonight now you have posted one 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| Smokin Joe wrote: |
| Esta es mi gato no mi siento bien |
My Spanish isn't too hot, so I ran this through Google Translate. Apparently you just said "this is my cat not my feel good".
I just wanted to say that I hope your cat feels better soon.
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No good news me thinks.....FL increasing next weekend again to stupid heights...as per metcheck aand netweather.....I so hope they are wrong
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Chris Brookes, surely the snow coming in this week is good news regardless of next weekend's temperatures!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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The short term trend seems set. Snow across the alps this week, with freezing levels around 1500m and the snowline around 1200m in the west.
GFS 0z and ECM 0z couldn't be more different in the long term. The GFS blows up a huge and warm Euro high. Freezing levels at >3000m for much of the week after next. The ECM brings in cold from the east again.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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philmes,
do you think there will be a north/south divide, from what ive read and seen on some of the graphs, the further south you are the better??? any idea,s
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You know it makes sense.
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GFS spread of over 10C by 19 February. Spread of over 25C by 25 February. ECM and it's ensembles take it much colder from midweek. So a great deal of uncertainty still...
Snow coming into French Alps on Valentine's Day evening. Nice.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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nozawaonsen, you seemed to call that valentines snow ages ago - good forecasting chief!
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Poster: A snowHead
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First of the 12z's GME/DWD sends the low on a more southerly track.
Very similar to ECM 00z. That's what we wanted to see...
[that and the rugby score line]
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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nozawaonsen,
PLEASE dont mention score recording it as working, also i mentioned earlier that there seemed to be a north/south divide more cms predicted for Ld2 THAN AVORIAZ is that still the case ,or has that changed with the low on a more southerly track
ps i can guess the rugby,s going well then
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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phillip33, don't worry about predications for cms for anything more than about a day out. It changes far too much from run to run.
Low pressure driving south increases the likely snow this week for the Alps as a whole. Decreases the chances of it being very warm over half term. It won't be settled on this run. Probably not for a couple more days.
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thanks enjoy the rugbynozawaonsen,
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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phillip33, those cm forecasts (are you looking at snow-forecast?) are really, really, not worth bothering with even closer in - they just give some sort of feeling for orders of magnitude, and only then if you follow them over some periods of time, to get a feel for how it goes. For example, we have had two 20 cm falls of snow since early January. On both occasions snow-forecast predicted less than half that. We have sometimes had 50 cms in 24 hours (in the olden days......) but never had anything like that quantity forecast.
That's not to say they always err on the upside. Promising looking snowfalls a week ahead often don't materialise.
The forecasts are seemingly evolving in a direction much more encouraging than some of the possibilities which were lurking around a few days ago. Something to rejoice about, as the holiday hordes descend on the Alps.
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Still a lot to be decided yet...
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| Quote: |
Still a lot to be decided yet...
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Indeed. I bought some ski passes today, for my niece and party borrowing our place at half term. The woman in the ski pass office - a local, who we've been buying passes from for years now, was gloomy about the snow prospects. I'd be happy if it doesn't rain, frankly. If the pistes stay as they are now, with no deterioration, that would be a far better outcome than some of those which have been slung into the hat.
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GFS 12z operational is going the way of... ECM (and cold) 
FI would be very cold. Complete reversal of the 00z GFS.
Interesting. Still very uncertain.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Loving the GFS 12z evolution of both next weeks precipitation and then its trend towards the ECM...too much yo-yoing about to call anything other than up to next Thurs.
Id say most if not all fench alps will be happy by weds/thurs next week. GFS is delaying things till 15th for some but we are now within the reliable timeframe.
After that it really is a case of will it be cold and dry...or cool and moist. The jet will determine this and models are not quite picking up. UKMET slightly favouring ECM evolution from past couple of days.
FI looks f-f-freezing (on this run).
To those who cannot understand the squggly lines of the ensembles this is a very beginnerish guide.
Each model is run several times one ru7n is at hight resolution on the GFS (The control run). Therefore what the ensembles show is what each run (or pertubution) is predicting. If we look at Nozawaosen's post at the top of this page (57) you can see all the various lines relatively close to each other up to the 17th february. This means that all the runs have produced similar results and thus high confidence up to the 17th. Past that notice how the bold green line (which is the output model of the GFS (The one all the forecasts are based on)) just after the 19th Jan is showing as one of the warmest. That means that for at least that day, the GFS is overdooing the temperatures.
Basically the graphs are a timeline of what temperature, pressure and precipitation is anticipated by each model run with the bold green line being the output model. If the green line was way above or below the majority of the others, then chances are it is either over-or under doing certain parameters.
Hope that helps.
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| pam w wrote: |
| For example, we have had two 20 cm falls of snow since early January. |
You must be in a real micro-climate because nearly everywhere in the French Northern Alps has had only 1 fall in January around the 12th, of about 20cm. The previous fall was around Christmas. Both time this fell largely as rain at lower altitudes.
| Quote: |
| Id say most if not all fench alps will be happy by weds/thurs next week |
Nah, it won't make a lot of difference. 20-30cm isn't enough. It needs more like a meter to get things back on track. Too little, too late.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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The last snowfall in Serre Chevalier was on the 10th January. Definitely more than 20cm at altitude .
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Excellent I never dared to ask as I am sure it regularly does! BTW what is FI that is often talked bout?
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The UK will get snow next week.
Mostly the top half.
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You know it makes sense.
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FI is a slightly silly phrase which stands for Fantasy Island. It tends to be used for parts of the output which are too far out to have any confidence in. It can vary, but it would normally be about +144 to +168 can be earlier if things are especially unclear.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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The cold GFS operational run does have some support amongst the ensembles, but the mean remains around seasonal average underlining how uncertain it all is (I'd have been astonished if after how warm it was running this morning it was any different, I'm fairly surprised - pleasantly- to see how GFS has moved to the ECM option. And GME, NOGAPS and to an extent UKMO have too).
It will be interesting to see if ECM sticks to it's guns later this evening. And even more so whether this solution picks up support over the next day or two. Given how much the forecasts are swinging back and forth it would not be a surprise to see some more twists and turns.
But I'll certainly pocket the offer of some snow next week and a cold outlook for now...
Time to go to the pub...
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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nozawaonsen, pam w, thanks for your answers enjoy your evening
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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davidof, your post made me wonder about when our snow was. I found this, which I wrote in an email to a friend who has an apartment here, on 10 January
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| It snowed last night - not a huge amount, but made a big difference. I went out early, when it was v quiet. The Girolles and Perdrix were unpisted - just about my level, not too deep, though the snow was a big heavy. Wasn't exactly champagne powder. |
then two days later
| Quote: |
| We are hoping for some nice fresh tomorrow - it's snowing this afternoon and this evening. Going to be super warm at the weekend though, and this one fall is not going to be able to last through days of warm sunshine. We'll see. |
I think some other areas (including Serre Chevalier, as Hells Bells notes) got more than we did.
Doesn't amount to much though (though a lot better than Jan 2007, as I noted in my photos on the "no snow in the French Alps" thread) and I'm astonished how good the piste skiing still is.
Les Saisies used to have a Nivose, but we don't any more - I really miss it.
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| pam w wrote: |
| davidof, your post made me wonder about when our snow was. I found this, which I wrote in an email to a friend who has an apartment here, on 10 January |
I checked all the surrounding weather stations though and there was a around 20cm during the whole of Jan which fell around the 13th. 2 falls of 10cm or one fall of 20cm still amounts to very little. You may have got more at les Saisies and there may have been more at Serre Chevalier which can get some of the Italian weather, but there again the nearest weather stations in the Ecrins and la Meije show 20cm at 3000m.
In 2007 you had 40cm at the start of Jan, 30cm in the middle of Jan and another dump of 60cm around the 13th Feb. There was less snow at the start of the season which is why in your photo you see more old crud piled up in the car-park.
No point kidding yourselves guys, this is a poor poor season in Northern French Alps. Maybe next week things will improve a lot. I'm hoping for 50cm from Mon thru' Sat which will just about reboot the season. Anything less will be cosmetic, except for the ski pistes which really need a change from artifical snow.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I'm certainly not suggesting it's a great season - but late January we still had more snow, and better piste conditions, than in 2007. We had snow from 9 - 12 January, in two distinct falls, and Miranda reported a decent fall in La Giettaz about the same time. The start of this season, here, was vastly better than 2006 - we had friends here for Christmas 2006 who said it was beautifully sunny but snow thin and disappearing - we arrived on 30 Dec IIRC and conditions were vastly worse than they've been at any other time, including end of seasons in April. This season we had friends arrive on 18th December, when there'd been good snow fairly recently, and conditions remained good through till New Year, with a couple of good powder days (my offspring had an epic couple of hours being introduced to off piste with a local instructor). then it got grotty and rained and was generally nasty till 9th Jan - the two top ups we had over the next few days just about got us through till it got cold enough to blow snow, around 20 Jan.
According to Meteo France the Beaufortain has 110cms at 200m (north facing), the Haute Tarentaise and Mont Blanc 80 cms and Oisans 70 cms.
It's going to get bad this week all over, with big crowds and lower areas closed or generally grotty. I'm off at 6 am tomorrow!
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| pam w wrote: |
| We had snow from 9 - 12 January, in two distinct falls, and Miranda reported a decent fall in La Giettaz about the same time |
Yup. We were a bit worried about our guests arriving on the 5th January. The forecast was for a fair amount of rain - we went out bought extra drying racks for all the apartments! And then it turned out to be a great week - the rain eased off quickly and there were two distinct and decent snowfalls; some of the kids made an amazing igloo out of snow bricks made from buckets we gave them, while it continued to snow down on them all evening.
It also snowed again the following week for a couple of hours whilst the guys were doing some work in the car park. But I didn't bother to report it because it was those teeny, tiny flakes that had no hope of settling and it was just in this little area here - you could see blue skies a km or two away!
Of course it's not a great season for many people, us included. But that snow did happen, whatever the weather station stats say.
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| Quote: |
I'm hoping for 50cm from Mon thru' Sat which will just about reboot the season. Anything less will be cosmetic, except for the ski pistes which really need a change from artifical snow.
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Totally agree , coming towards the second half of Feb only a major fall will stick to the bare slopes , 30 cms will melt in days now the ground has warmed up , but anything greater than 50cms on top of old snow with Hoar frost will create a compleatly new problem , if it comes be careful out there .
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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With pam w here, definitely 2 falls of about 15cm and 25cm (at altitude) a couple of days apart in early Jan. Up to that point, in my opinion at least, this had been a good season. Heavy snow in early December, then again just before we opened and another big dump over Christmas. Then 2 half-decent snowfalls at the end of the first week of January. At that point, I was pretty pleased with the conditions. It's just that there's been nothing but sun-shine since!
Since the season started, we've had zero or negligible rain here (1550m), certainly nothing to "wash everything away". Think we had one afternoon where it was mild and wet, rain/snow limit got up to about 2000m, but it wasn't heavy and it didn't last long. There was a more severe mild spell in early/mid December, but that was recovered by the snow that fell just before opening day on the 18th.
In terms of ski operations, this January has been miles better than '07, where they were having to download on the first lift here. This year, even the back-to-base red run is still open and in good condition (I just rode it!) and it's always the first to suffer (faces south, no snow-making, undercut by 2 streams!).
That's just my experience from being up the hill every day, nothing scientific. We still have very good piste conditions here this morning even! Off-piste is pish, but that's life (although our neighbour reckons he still got good snow on a north-facing slope on a big tour the other day).
It's certainly a below-average season so far, but to call it the "worst in a generation" is ridiculous.
Anyway, to keep to the Outlook theme, looks like good cross-model support for at least 20cm+ over Tuesday/Wednesday but it seems that there's still a big split regarding temperatures heading into next week.
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stevomcd, nice to know conditions arent too bad in Sainte Foy. We are heading out on the 27th for a week so hoping for a bit of snow in the next couple of weeks to freshen things up!
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FAQ
and he said with this fresh snow on the current base it's going to be lethal.
