Hochschwab Mountains

Caution: snow drift is prone to triggering, especially in gullies and bowls with old snowpacks.

Caution: snow drift is prone to triggering, especially in gullies and bowls with old snowpacks.

The Avalanche danger above around 1.800 m AMSL is moderate, below 1.800 m AMSL: low. Stormy winds from west to northwest cleared out exposed slopes but drifted snow towards gullies and bowls behind ridgelines. Snowdirftpacks tend to be prone to triggering, possible slab avalaches are small to medium, could be triggered by individual skiers with small additional load. Due to temporary warming and radiationon saturday the situation eased out on sunny slopes, the situation on shady slopes is marginal changing. Due to windshift increaasing snowdrift in west sector is expected. Depending on the wind influence avalanche prone locations can offer only weak snowpack layers, risk of falling.

In the area of the northern Alps as well as on the north side of Tauern the amount of new snow during the night of saturday is significantly more than predicted. The amount of new snow in Totes Gebirge and the area of Hochschwab is about 50 cm. The snow got on bare soils, fresh snow drift in gullies and bowls in highe shady slopes got on bonded snow from the last Novemberdays which transformed to facetted snow crystals.

After the low pressure weather system and an intermediate high pressure system a cold front will arrive from west. A low pressure system coming from Italy will be dominant. During the night heavy clouds will appear and lead to low visibility on sunday and overcast. Minimal snowing on the south side of Tauern and along the Gurk Alps, Seetaler Alps to Koralpe. Medium winds from northeast and southeast. Temperatures are falling and reach around noon in 1.500 m AMSL around -2° C and in 2.000m AMSL -5°C. Following days will moderate cold and unstable. Larger amounts of snow are not predicted.

Low amounts of new snow and weakening wind will not lead to significant changes of the avalanche danger scale.