Allgäu Alps West

Limited visibility, heightened wet-snow danger

Temperatures dropping slightly, gloomy wet-cold mountain weather with lots of fog and intermittent rainfall. In evening, drier. Temperature at 2000m: 0 degrees; at 3000m: -5 degrees. Light winds at high altitudes.

Slight high-pressure front conditions, increasingly pleasant conditions, milder temperatures. Starkly reduced nocturnal outgoing radiation continues.

Limited visibility, heightened wet-snow danger

Danger of wet-snow avalanches is heightened even as of early morning in all aspects below 2400m. Naturally triggered avalanches are possible, avalanches can also be triggered by persons and grow to large size, also sweep along great amounts of wet snow in their plummet path and then extend to very long runout zones. In high alpine regions, small ridgeline snowdrift accumulations are still prone to triggering. In addition, winter sports enthusiasts can in places on high-altitude shady slopes trigger near-surface weak layers. Such danger zones are impossible to recognize. Atop the hardened snowpack surface, there is danger of being forced to take a fall on steep slopes.

Following starkly reduced outgoing radiation and mild temperatures, the snowpack is hardly freezing at night. Above 2200m about 5cm of fresh snow is expected, below that altitude as intermittent rainfall. At 1800-2400m the snowpack, even on north-facing slopes, is thoroughly wet and ground-level layers of rotten snow are prone to triggering. In high-altitude, steep and shady terrain, there are unfavorable intermediate layers in the uppermost metre of the snowpack which in places are prone to triggering. A thick mid-section of compact layers blankets the deep hoar and faceted crystals at the base of the snowpack.