Second Summer Snowfall In The Alps is Greater Than First

Three weeks after the snowfall in the Alps in late July, another wave of snowfall, this time heavier than the last, has left deep snow on some of the continent's glaciers for lucky summer skiers and boarders on the slopes this weekend.

Infact only half a dozen glacier ski areas are open in the alps at present with Les 2 Alpes in France, the Molltal and Hintertux glaciers in Austria, Cervinia in Italy and recently re-opened Saas Fee plus year round Zermatt in Switzerland to choose from.

Saas Fee was the only one to actually post a fresh snowfall accumulation measurement, with 41cm (16 inches) of fresh snow for mid-August powder snowsports. It is pictured above after the snowfall.

The snowfalls were separated by a visit from the very hot weather system called Luicifer, which brought temperatures up to the 40s Celcius to the Alps, which had a severe impact on summer snow cover.

Passo Stelvio in Italy is currently closed because snow on its glacial ice has largely melted away.

Winter is coming! :)

We need a super wet autumn or is going to take forever to fill in the glaciers enough to make them safe to ski. Just hope there in no Indian summer stretching into October.

Zermatt tourist office reported 20 cm of new snow on 11.08.17 taking the total to 80 cm, before then they were reporting 60 cm with the last snowfall as being on 28.05.17. https://www.zermatt.ch/en/Snow-report#snowreport

Curiously they state that the measuring point is located at 2900 metres. There is no snow at 2900 metres as you can see if you look at the Trockener Steg webcam https://www.matterhornparadise.ch/en/current/webcams/trockener-steg_webcam_881?
The lowest point in the summer skiing area is at 3410 metres.

Before the latest snowfall Saas Fee was reporting 90 cm (J2Ski's Where To Ski or Snowboard In August 2017) now 4 days after reporting a 41 cm snowfall they are reporting a depth of only 50 cm!

J2SkiNews, surely you are aware that nobody actually measures the snow depth for these tourist office snow reports.

Summer in the Swiss Alps arrived in the middle of May and since then the monthly temperatures have been at least 2°C above the average for the last 30 years. If you would like to see the actual and past state of the glaciers check out the Panomax webcams at Plateau Rosa https://cervinia.panomax.com/plateau-rosa# and Mittelallalin https://panocam.skiline.cc/saas-fee/allalin both have archives going back 12 months.

As you can see it's going to take a great deal of new snow to adequately bridge the crevasses. Not a worry if you stick to the pistes as they fill them in, which is just as well as some of them are 40 m deep.