If you are looking for the cold, you have to climb the Dachstein. And even there, there is no guarantee that temperatures will fall below freezing. Because a warm front that hit Upper Austria yesterday will drive spring across the country in the coming days. This warm front has a congenial partner: high pressure from the west means that the sun will shine from an almost clear sky today and tomorrow. At least where the fog clears during the day. It is also unusually mild in the mountains: the frost line rises to 3000 meters, at 1500 meters above sea level the temperatures rise to six degrees and at 2000 meters to four degrees. The wind will play a secondary role until Friday, only in the Bohemian Forest can it become noticeably unpleasant with peaks of up to 40 km/h.
“Today and tomorrow the maximum values are twelve degrees at the edge of the Alps. The nights are very cold, in Windischgarsten the temperatures drop to minus seven degrees,” says Yasmin Markl, meteorologist at ZAMG. But don’t get excited too early: Spring is just putting a little toe in the door. Winter strikes again on Friday: “A cold front brings cloudy weather, the snow line drops down to the lowlands,” says Markl. It will be sunny again at the weekend, but the air will remain cool, as is appropriate for the time of year.
“It was extremely dangerous in Tyrol”
The onset of spring is not a disadvantage for the avalanche situation in Upper Austria. “The snowdrift of the past few days will be able to settle quickly at these temperatures,” says Helmut Steinmaßl, avalanche officer for the Upper Austrian mountain rescue service. In general, there is a “relatively good snow cover foundation” in the country. That is also the decisive difference to the events in Tyrol, in which nine people were killed by avalanches within just two days. “We had the same warning level (level three, significant danger) in Upper Austria, but not the same conditions. It was extremely dangerous there because of the poor snow cover structure. And it still is,” says Steinmaßl. Caution and, above all, relief intervals are still the top priority in Upper Austria.
Source: Nachrichten
