Nock Mountains

Note the persistent weak layer

Note the persistent weak layer

The avalanche risk is low. Medium-sized slab avalanches can still be triggered in a few hard-to-recognise places, especially in the extended northern sector above 1800 m, but usually only with a large additional load. This is in particular at the transitions from little to more snow.

On the sunny slopes, isolated wet snow avalanches are possible as the snowpack softens. These usually remain small.

The snowpack outgoing longwave radiation is greatly reduced overnight and only just a thin melt-freeze crust forms. In shady high altitudes, some soft, faceted snow can still be found on the surface, some of which has already crusted can form. Below this lies a mostly well-set sequence of compact drift snow layers, in which, however, a crust in combination with faceted crystals is usually still embedded. The connection at the transition to the old snow foundation, which consists mainly of deep rime, is still poor. Deep and sunny middle layers are largely snowed out.

The night will be mostly cloudy and the frost line will drop to around 1700 metres by the morning. On Thursday, rain or snow will fall repeatedly in the morning, in the afternoon it will generally dry out a little, but further short showers will form and dense clouds will restrict visibility. A total of 5 to 10 cm of new fallen snow will fall in the northern mountain regions, less in the south and east. The snowfall level is between 1200 and 1500 metres. There will only be a few showers in Lungau, where it may clear up a little at times. Later in the day it will generally soften up a little from the west. The wind will blow mainly weak to moderate from west to north-west. Temperatures at 2000 metres will be around -3 degrees.

No significant change in the avalanche danger as the weather improves on Friday.