"Unprecedented" April Snowstorm

ChrisC

ChrisC

Well-known member
The Southern Alps look like they will receive a lot of snow over the next few days. It's too bad these mega-storms are coming so late in the season.



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Too bad for my Solitude friend who spent 2.5 weeks based at Cervinia with very little new snow and a lot of wind. Now it's getting four feet mid-mountain.

Fraser confirms:

Today in the Alps​

Updated: 10.30am Tuesday 15 April 2025 – Biggest storm of the season for some parts of the the Alps?
After a relatively dry and warm first half of April the weather in the Alps is now turning much more unsettled, with some serious precipitation on the cards for some areas over the next few days, with both rain and snow.
Bergfex chart showing expected snowfall totals in the Alps between 15 and 17 April 2025 with the darker pinks and purples suggesting the potential for over 1m of new snow – Weather to ski – Today in the Alps, 15 April 2025


Forecasts show that expected snowfall totals in the Alps between now and Thursday (17 April) could reach over 1m in some areas (shown with the darker pinks and purples)

This storm will be a highly complex amalgam of disturbances of both Atlantic and Mediterranean origin. It will broadly hit the western Italian Alps hardest but with intense precipitation spilling over certain border areas, especially into the Zermatt/Saas-Fee regions in Switzerland but also affecting French ski resorts near the border, from Isola 2000 all the way up to Val Cenis and Val d’Isère/Tignes.

Indeed, a few areas in the firing line could see well over 1m of new snow at altitude (with 1.5m+ in places), including resorts that are still open like Val d’Isere, the Monte Rosa region, Cervinia, Zermatt and Saas-Fee.

The rain/snow limit will be highly variable, generally starting above 2000m but falling to 1500m or lower under the more intense precipitation, especially on Wednesday. At altitude the risk of avalanche will become critical in some of the areas mentioned above, with the risk of flooding and landslides increasing lower down.

On the whole, over the next few days, the further north and east you are in the Alps, the less precipitation there will be.
 
jamesdeluxe said:
Too bad for my Solitude friend who spent 2.5 weeks based at Cervinia with very little new snow and a lot of wind. Now it's getting four feet mid-mountain.
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It's the same in Lake Tahoe, which is now an average season. Didn't we have the driest January ever?

It's also called Colorado, Sun Valley, Banff....even interior BC was bad for a month

Although commuting to Solitude via SLC is likely something I will never do again, it's a super poor value, over-crowded: small mountain, $ parking



But this year in the Alps was a very bad
 
With more than five feet on the glacier in Tignes and almost seven feet on the Pisaillas glacier above Val d’Isère, Fraser's article is calling it the most significant April snowstorm in living memory.

Arc 1600 in France
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Moving forward, @EMSC should keep in mind that (similar to Colorado) April is the best month for Alps destination visits with big groups! :icon-lol:
 
I feel like Luke Snow got burned by just how massive this Alsp storm was. I think I read that he diverted to Austria.

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He avoided the storm center by a lot:






 
Giving away $40+ of Raclette and Water. The Swiss do have a way with marking up the most pedestrian food.

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jamesdeluxe said:
Moving forward, @EMSC should keep in mind that (similar to Colorado) April is the best month for Alps destination visits with big groups! :icon-lol:
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Recall I never said it didn't snow in the Alps.

I still maintain that a majority of snow in the alps comes in exactly this type of storm: humongous. With only some snowfall outside of the huge dumps. eg more Sierra like than Colo or BC like, making pre-booked skiing very much a crap shoot at best.
 
EMSC said:
Recall I never said it didn't snow in the Alps.

I still maintain that a majority of snow in the alps comes in exactly this type of storm: humongous. With only some snowfall outside of the huge dumps. eg more Sierra like than Colo or BC like, making pre-booked skiing very much a crap shoot at best.
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There also seems to be the issue of snow quality preservation after these big dumps. Last season i waited until 4 days before my trip to book Courmayeur seeing 2+ feet in the forecast but one warm day following the storm (1st week of March) and all of the off piste except one northern facing section at La Thuille and parts of the Vallee Blanche were completely shot. Moving forward I will be paying more attention.
 
EMSC said:
I still maintain that a majority of snow in the alps comes in exactly this type of storm: humongous. With only some snowfall outside of the huge dumps. eg more Sierra like than Colo or BC like, making pre-booked skiing very much a crap shoot at best.
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Review of Western regional standard deviations as percent of season snowfalls:

Northern and Central Colorado 18-25%, Beaver Creek and Winter Park under 20%, A-Basin highest

Canadian Rockies and Interior B.C. 18-25%, Okanagan and Revelstoke/Rogers Pass under 20%, Banff areas highest.

US Northern Rockies 18-26%, Big Sky, Brundage, Targhee under 20%, interior NW areas are the highest.

Southern and Western Colorado 21-29%, Aspen, Monarch, Telluride lower, Crested Butte, Wolf Creek, Taos higher

Utah 24-30%, lowest in the Cottonwoods

US Pacific Northwest 26-30% but 23% at Whistler

California 36-43%, lowest NW of Tahoe, SoCal is 51%

In the Northeast Vermont and Quebec are 20-25%, NY 25-30%, NH and Maine 30-35%

The Alps data I got from Fraser in 2014 is not as comprehensive, but the overall average standard deviation was 31%.

The French Tarantaise and the high snow regions Andermatt and NW Tyrol/Vorarlberg are in the 25-30% range.

In general the low altitudes are over 30%, likely due to rain incidence increasing snow volatility.

Isola 2000 is 40%. I think that’s a good assumption for Southern Alps areas completely blocked out from northern or western storms. This would not be true for borderline areas like the Aosta region and Serre Chevalier.

So overall are the Alps Colorado average with California volatility? Not quite, more like PNW volatility. But of course the average snowfall in the PNW is like the very highest Warth Schrocken in the Alps.

Southern Hemisphere volatility is on another level. Scattered data from Oz/NZ looks like about 35%. Las Lenas is 50% and Portillo 56%.
 
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skiandgolfnut said:
There also seems to be the issue of snow quality preservation after these big dumps. Last season i waited until 4 days before my trip to book Courmayeur seeing 2+ feet in the forecast but one warm day following the storm (1st week of March) and all of the off piste except one northern facing section at La Thuille and parts of the Vallee Blanche were completely shot.
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Snow preservation is all about altitude and exposure. Courmayeur has primary east exposure, which will not preserve powder in March.

Midwinter many places in the Alps can get away with varied exposures due to 46-47 degree latitude.

Most major US western ski areas are in 38-40 latitude range. So north exposure is respected more here and not as much in Canada. The top 100 North American resorts in ZRankings average 42% north, 26% east, 19% west and 12% south exposures.

The 42 Euro areas in Fraser’s data average 32% north, 21% east, 27% west and 19% south exposures. We also know that altitude ranges of Alps ski areas vary radically more in latitude context than in North America.

So it’s no accident that altitude and exposure are emphasized in Fraser’s snow quality equation more than snowfall.
 
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Tony Crocker said:
So overall are the Alps Colorado average with California volatility? Not quite, more like PNW volatility.
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Interesting data, though I note it is annual in nature for this analysis. Probably much harder to determine within season volatility which is one of my assumptions based mostly on watching from afar. That is the part I think might be Sierra like. Big dumps then not much, big dump then not much, etc....
 
EMSC said:
I note it is annual in nature for this analysis
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For the North American ski regions, monthly volatility is quite consistently about double season volatility. That means if season standard deviation is 25% of average annual snowfall, monthly standard deviation is about 50% of average monthly (using only Dec.-Mar. for data quality) snowfall. Since averages by month aren't very different in the Alps, I would think a similar relationship would hold. Fraser does not have enough monthly data to check this out.

IMHO Colorado's consistent small snowfalls are not the primary reason for its consistent surface conditions. If snow has been melt/frozen, 3-6 inches of fluff yields mostly dust-on-crust skiing. In many places by March you need a foot of snow to reset winter conditions. But thanks to altitude/exposure, Colorado's snow does not melt/freeze as easily or as early in the spring as nearly any other ski region in the world.
 
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