The fire brigades in Carinthia recorded over 800 missions on Wednesday and Thursday. Sudden snowfalls paralyzed road and rail traffic as well as the power supply. 20,000 households were without electricity Thursday morning, three railway lines were out of service. Up to 41 centimeters of fresh snow fell in a few hours. The cleanup lasted all day yesterday.
According to meteorologist Yasmin Markl, the trigger for the major damage was not low temperatures, but a low pressure area over northern Italy. “As a result, a lot of humid air was pressed to the south side of the Alps. We normally know this phenomenon from the north side of the Alps. The high level of humidity resulted in very wet, heavy snow, which is of course particularly stressful for infrastructure such as electricity pylons,” says the expert from the central authority for meteorology and geology.
In Upper Austria there was only a few light snowfalls yesterday and the day before yesterday. Conditions similar to those in Carinthia are not to be feared, according to Markl.
Afternoon sun
After the cold snap in the middle of the week, the temperatures in Upper Austria will remain wintry in the coming days. Today Upper Austria is influenced by a high pressure area, so that after fog in the morning the afternoon can also bring some hours of sunshine in the lowlands. At night it cools down to minus seven degrees, during the day the maximum temperatures are three degrees.
In the course of the afternoon, a disturbance from the west pulls in, which pushes a dense cloud cover over the country from the Innviertel. On Saturday, snowfall is possible again and again due to a low pressure area, before the weather brightens up a bit in the afternoon. The wind is picking up, peaks of 50 km / h are possible.
On Sunday, a warm front brings again inconsistent weather, both rain and snowfall are possible, the sky remains cloudy. And so the weather stays in the coming week: mostly cloudy, in between a little sun is possible.
Source: Nachrichten
