A fresh snow storm is hitting the Alps this weekend and the first images of snowy slopes are appearing on social media and webcam images less than 24 hours after the same resorts were delighting in the 'Indian Summer.'
Lech is pictured above at 3pm this afternoon (6 October 17).
The snow storm is the fourth since the start of September for many areas and likely to bring snow down to the lowest elevations yet (around 1000m above sea level).
Around 14 glacier ski areas are currently open in the Alps, with more than half of these in Austria.
Many spoof the open ski areas are currently organising 17-18 ski gear tests, combined with Oktoberfest parties in some cases.
Other ski resorts like Livigno, Zermatt and Andermatt where major lift construction projects are underway and on a tight schedule in order to be complete for the start of this (or in the case of Zermatt's new 3S lift, next season will probably not welcome the autumnal snowfall.
The Kitzsteinhorn Glacier plans to open its terrain park this weekend but no glaciers were planning to open that were not already open.
Cervinia plans to open next weekend (weekend only) and Kitzbuhel is also hoping to open limited terrain, the first non-glacier resort in the Alps to do so, using snow stockpiled from last season, but it may now have fresh snow too.