We think it may be going to snow!

From our weekly Snow Forecast e-mails - as sent this morning :-

The weather is at last about to change in Europe. An active frontal system looks set to push in from the Atlantic around the 1st or 2nd of January to bring significant precipitation - and falling temperatures will ensure that means snow down to the valley floor in many areas.

The best of the snow is likely to fall in the Northern French Alps, Western Austria, the Aosta Valley in Italy and Switzerland - with some areas looking good for a right pasting! Accumulations of up to a metre, for some resorts, are possible in the first few days of the New Year. The Southern Alps should get at least a top-up but it's unclear at this stage whether the weather system will bring much-needed snow to the Pyrenees and Andorra.

Even better news is that this particular system could usher in low pressure conditions likely to persist through the first half of January - so there could very well be a lot more snow over the next two weeks.

Avalanche

We'll leave you with a word of caution if you're skiing in January - the recent warm weather has left a base of potentially unstable snow; so there will likely be an elevated avalanche risk. We quote from Avalanche Expert Henry;

As I mentioned last week, once the snow does fall, the new snow layer will be on top of a very weak layer that is out there now. This weak layer is fine by itself, but once it has something on it, it is really unstable.

Still a few days to go yet - so the forecast may change completely - but it is looking rather better than it has been!

I hope you're right Admin Man but the current trend shows freezing levels hovering around 2000m+ over most of the alps, combine this with south to south westerly winds means the first wave of this precipitation will fall as RAIN aaagh!! Fingers crossed the temps drop rapidly throughout next week!!

From this mornings data refresh it looks like the cold air may get a little further into the Alps - and bring the snow line down to 1,000 metres for the Northern French Alps, the Valais and a few chosen spots in Austria and Italy. The areas around Mont Blanc are sitting pretty we reckon.

Here's hoping anyway - all eyes on the web-cams as it should start tomorrow.

Fingers crossed for a Happy New Year!