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WeatherBlog 20 2020/21 | Sun, sun, Easter cold?

Widespread friendly, uncertain development at the beginning of next week

by Lea Hartl 03/31/2021
The summery weather will reach its peak today, Wednesday. From tomorrow, it will become more unstable and temperatures will drop slightly. The development over the Easter period could be interesting: It is likely to become significantly cooler again, especially in the east of the Alpine region. Interesting options in the medium term!

Current situation and outlook

A wide area of high pressure over western and central Europe is dominating our weather and providing plenty of sunshine. Warm, subtropical air masses are being directed northwards and the temperatures here and there are already in the region of "summer days" in the meteorological sense (=days on which the 25°C mark is exceeded). Today is likely to be the warmest day of this unusually warm spell. Thursday will also be quite sunny across the board, but a low pressure system in the east will gain some influence. From Friday, there will be more clouds than recently, especially in the eastern Alps, and showers cannot be ruled out. The wind will increasingly shift to the NE and it will become cooler. These changes are not exactly a dramatic "weather plunge", but it will be noticeably colder and less sunny. The weather pattern will be similar towards the weekend: Not really cold, but cooler than at present and no longer completely unclouded sunny, but mostly still quite friendly with usable conditions on the mountain. Depending on the region, you should be prepared for occasional showers. The night-time radiation will no longer be quite as unrestricted as in the last few days and the firn fun may therefore be less reliably predictable.

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The large-scale development looks like this: The currently relevant high-pressure center over ME is weakening, while another high is building up over the Atlantic and connecting with the high over ME. By Friday, the pressure centers will have shifted in such a way that the core of the high pressure will be located more in the area of the British Isles, i.e. more to the west and north than at present. Cooler air from the N or NE will flow in on the eastern flank of the high pressure system and the low pressure system in the east may approach the Alpine region.

Medium-term

So far, this is rather moderately spectacular. What will be exciting is the development from the beginning of next week. There are still many uncertainties here, but according to the current model opinion, the blocking Atlantic high could produce a fairly massive outbreak of cold air over ME. In contrast to the less dramatic disturbance on Friday and Saturday, this would be a veritable onset of winter with low temperatures and a chance of heavy precipitation if it comes to pass. In the ECMWF meteogram (left), you can see that the temperature in the main flow will drop significantly on Monday. At the same time, the precipitation signal is rising. However, you can also see that the uncertainties increase from Monday onwards. As a reminder: The thin lines are the individual ensemble runs that cover the spectrum of possible developments. The thick, dashed line is the main run, i.e. the "best", high-resolution calculation that the model produces without the small changes in the ensembles. The closer the lines are to each other, the less uncertainty there is in the forecast. In this case, we therefore see an exciting wintery main run, but also ensemble members who suspect a continuation of the mild spring weather. So let's let the Easter bunny surprise us!

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This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

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