© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© SeeAlpedHuez.com
Fresh snow in the forecast for Alpe d'Huez
Unfortunately, higher winds are also forecast...
The nice, settled weather of the last few days looks set to remain in Alpe d'Huez on Monday, before which it looks likely to be a bit more unsettled through to next weekend. This morning, the sunshine of Thursday, Friday and Saturday was replaced by cloudier conditions but winds remained nice and light.
Unfortunately, the wide isobars look set to be replaced by much narrower ones on Tuesday as a weather front arrives here having made its way across the Atlantic. The good news is that it should bring some snow with it, the bad news is that winds look set to increase with its arrival.
Snow is in the forecast for Monday 15th (evening), Tuesday 16th, and into Wednesday 17th when up to 55cm may fall up at higher elevations. Winds on Tuesday and Wednesday may gust up to around 50km/h which will inevitably lead to some intermittent lift closures. Hopefully, this should be limited to Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, after which the winds should drop back to around 20km/h.
Some more snow may arrive on Friday 19th as well, when a further 40cm may fall. There may also be some more snow next weekend (Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday) after which the weather looks likely to settle down. Freeze height is currently at around 1300 metres. On Wednesday, that is set to fall to around 300 metres when temperatures in resort will drop around -10ºC. This means that any snow that falls will be nice and light and powdery.
On-piste snow cover currently stands at:
- Alpe d’Huez resort (1850m) - 155cm
- Pic Blanc (3300m) - 170cm
- Auris village (1650m) - 85cm
- Auris Signal (2176m) - 90cm
- Villard Reculas (1500m) - 62cm
This resort depth of 155cm is a fantastic base layer for January. It is the biggest depth since official records began in 1981, some 37 years ago.
Meanwhile off-piste cover currently stands at:
- 2500m: north - 280cm, south - 240cm
- 2000m: north - 185cm, south - 160cm
- 1500m: north - 85cm, south - 45cm
- 1000m: north - 20cm, south - 0cm
Snow currently lies to an elevation of around 1000m on north-facing areas and 1200m on south-facing areas. This is well below the very lowest of pistes here in Alpe d’Huez which extend down to an elevation of around 1500 metres.
Avalanche risk has steadied now and still stands at 2 out of 5 at elevations below 2500 metres, rising to 3 out of 5 at the very highest of elevations between 2500 and 3300 metres – as is always the case take care and respect the mountain.
We currently have 47 lifts open (out of 49) in resort and these are serving 71 pistes. Of these 71 pistes, 23 are green, 20 are blue, 16 are red and 12 are black. Given the great snow cover at the moment, all of the slopes are in great condition. There are currently 32km of Nordic ski trails and 26km of walking trails open as well.
Up at the top of the Pic Blanc, the Sarenne black run is in perfect fit for its whole length and the Tunnel black run, whilst open, is still not for the faint-hearted – it's super steep and mogully. Lift queues have been nice and short for the last week or so and they will be even shorter this week as the final families and students have now all left resort. The last of the schools and universities start back on Monday 15th.
Conditions on all the slopes are really good at the moment and, with a nice low freeze height, this looks set to remain the case for the foreseeable future. The whole of the Grande Domaine ski area is in cracking condition, with neighbouring villages of Auris, Oz, Villard Reculas and Vaujany all in great nick.
The days are continuing to lengthen. Sunrise this morning was 08:11 and, with sunset at 17:15, we had 9 hours and 5 minutes of daylight today.
Bon ski!
