(Could this be the Alps in about a week's time?!)
Snow forecasters appear increasingly confident that the December drought of precipitation in the Alps will end with the end of this year and that the first week of January will be a snowy one.
If correct this could signal a near repeat of winter 2014-15 when heavy snow arrived on the last weekend of the year after a dry, warm Autumn. This season the dry warm season appears to have continued a little longer, in to New Year's Week, although otherwise December conditions have been better than 20-14 thanks to late November snowfalls which didn't happen last year. Hopefully there won't be the repeat of the now infamous change-over day chaos that the snow brought last winter.
Snow forecasts are current somewhat 'fluid' with the arrival of the snow still 3-4 days away but the most optimistic so far predict up to 1.2m will fall in the first four or five days of 2016 in the French Alps with temperatures dropping below zero. Most resorts in the Western Alps are forecast to get 60-90cm of snow in the same period. The Pyrenees may also get up to a foot (30cm) of snow too.
The forecast is slightly less optimistic so far for Austria where resorts like Mayrhofen and Zell am See are currently struggling with only 6-8 inches of snow on uppers lopes and nothing in resort, they're currently only forecast to get a few more inches, although some higher resorts like Solden may get several feet.
There's some snow forecast for the Dolomites, which has had almost none this season, but so far the biggest forecasts are for a total of 15cm of snow in the first week of 2016, however that's up from zero forecast earlier today so it may keep increasing.