After six weeks with little fresh snow in the Alps, today has seen resorts across central Europe report falls of up to 80cm in the past 24 hours.
Most of Europe received heavy, and in some cases record breaking snowfalls during December and January followed by very cold weather in early February and very warm weather in late February and early March – in both cases with little fresh precipitation.
However unlike last winter when resorts had limited bases to rely on when the weather got warm, in this instance most of the major, higher resorts had so much early season snow lying to rely on that lack of fresh falls was not a major problem.
All are welcoming the new snow however – with many entering their last month of operations for 2011-12 and the start of the Easter holidays less than a fortnight away.
Heavy snow has been particularly reported in the northern Alps and with Swiss resorts reporting the biggest falls, including two feet (60cm) overnight at Andermatt; but more southerly resorts such as Serre Chevalier in France and in Italy the Aosta Valley and Madesimo have reported around a foot (30cm) each too.
Other big accumulations of similar magnitude have been reported in the French Grand Massif and Portes du Soleil, Saas Fee and Gstaad in Switzerland and the Austrian Arlberg – but most other areas have had at least some new snow too.