Ybbstaler Alpen

Fresh wind slab is prone to triggering!

Fresh wind slab is prone to triggering!

The avalanche risk is moderate above the tree line. Fresh drift snow areas can be triggered as small to medium-sized slab avalanches by low additional loads. The avalanche prone locations are located in particular in the steep terrain adjacent to the ridgeline, crest or summit in the north, east and south aspects as well as in gullies and bowls.

Since Thursday, 15 to 30 cm of new fallen snow has fallen, which was deposited with strong winds from the west as wind slab snow on a soft layer of snow interspersed with graupel. New fallen snow and wind create fresh drift snow areas. Weak layers for slab avalanches form soft deposits within the fresh, bound snow layer as well as soft snow layers (new fallen snow, faceted crystals) in the transition to the crusted can form. In places, their foundations are additionally weakened by kinetic metamorphism. In general, the amount of snow is still well below average.

In the evening and in the first half of the night it snowed widely, most of all in the Ybbstal Alps with up to 20 cm of new fallen snow. During the first few hours of Sunday, the mountain peaks in Lower Austria were still covered in thick clouds and in the Ybbstal Alps it was still snowing intermittently but not heavily. During the daytime changes, the clouds will soften and the sun will appear more often and for longer periods. The wind will blow exposed, strong to stormy from the north-west. It will be much colder again, with temperatures between -16 and -13 degrees at 2000 metres and around -13 degrees at 1500 metres.

After a sunny start on Monday, it will become increasingly cloudy from the west, with light snowfall in the afternoon. With moderate westerly winds, it will become much milder at all altitudes. Wind slabs remain the main problem at higher altitudes!