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Freezing levels - Austria vs France

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
I've seen it mentioned on Snowheads that Austria's generally lower altitude is compensated for by it being further east (and colder?) than the higher resorts of France.

As if to prove the point, Snow-forecast.com currently forecasts (in the next few days) snow falling down to about 2000m at Hintertux - but never below 3000m at Tignes. Is this typical Puzzled Or is it just the time of year?
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
As the colder weather comes in at this time of year it is frequently colder in the East. The weather changes very quickly too, it's 26 Deg C at the moment (15:00 08/10/09) but they are forecasting sub zero temps during the night in approx 1 week.

http://www.wetter.at/wetter/oesterreich/wien/wien

http://www.wetter.at/wetter/sport-freizeit/berg-wetter/
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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?
Well yes on the whole, the more western resorts get more warm air from the Atlantic, and the middle of a continental land mass usually sees more extremes of temperature (high and low) than the edges. There is a lot of data to support this, including rayscoops's own post the other day.

rayscoops wrote:
Right then, I have been wondering about this idea that Austrian resorts are effectively higher than the equivalent Freanch resorts, so I have just checked freeze levels of Notre Dame de Bellecombe (Fr 1000 - 2000m) and Saalbach (Austria 1000 - 2000m) for the month of March 2008 and this is the result. Basically Saalbach/Hinterglemm is colder on all accounts.

NDdB average afternoon freeze level is 1700m
Saalb average afternoon freeze level is 1300m

It was colder in Saalbach on 22 days of the month, and colder in NDdB on 8 days, one day it was the same temperature

The freeze line was 2000m and above on 10 occassions at NDdB
The freeze line was 2000m and above on 3 occassions at Saalbach

The freeze line was 1000m and below on 4 occassions at NDdB
The freeze line was 1000m and below on 7 occassions at Saalbach

The freeze line was 1500m and below on 10 occassions at NDdB
The freeze line was 1500m and below on 21 occassions at Saalbach


Obviously that only draws figures from one month, but it is interesting nonetheless. There is plenty of 'real' data (as in broader and more long term studies) that supports this.

I guess another pretty good indication is that there are a lot of ski resorts in Austria below 1000m with skiing to the village for most of the season, which I think is much harder to come by at that altitude further west, where most resorts are at 1600m or above, and 1300m is considered 'low altitude'. On the flip side, there are far fewer resorts in Austria above 1800m.

D
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