More than 60cm snow predicted in the next few days

After yesterday’s day of snowfall and grey skies it was lovely and sunny here in resort today – although it did cloud over as the day went on.

And thanks to yesterday’s snow things are looking a whole lot better here in resort after the forecast snow arrived. It started snowing at around 7am Tuesday morning and continued to snow pretty much throughout the day. Snow fell all the way down to around 900 metres, which is well below the lowest of pistes here in resort, so all the slopes in the Grande Domaine ski area received some much needed snow. 15cm fell on the very lowest slopes with around 20/25cm having fallen up on the higher slopes at 3300 metres.

After high pressure had been dominating the alpine weather for well over a month, which led to a long period of very settled and dry weather, low pressure finally took over on Monday with barometric pressure falling to around 1014mb which brought with it some unsettled weather and finally some snow here yesterday. This area of low pressure looks set to remain, and indeed increase in its intensity, with pressure dropping to around 1008mb on Thursday and Friday. 

Loads more snow is forecast with around 28cm predicted for Thursday, 31cm for Friday, 3cm for Saturday afternoon/evening and finally 2cm for Sunday before the sunshine and more settled weather returns on Monday. 

The forecast for next week looks more settled with lots of sunshine and it will remain pretty cold on the whole. These cold temperatures will allow the continued use of the massive snow cannon network here in resort, which will further serve to supplement the fresh snow.

With this snow on Thursday and Friday will come a tightening in the isobars which will result in some windy conditions, with gusts of around 60/70kph expected at higher altitudes and this may well lead to some intermittent lift closures, particularly to the very highest of the lifts (Pic Blanc and Marmottes 3 in particular).

After the recent snowfall cover now stands at 110cm up at 3300 metres dropping to around 25cm around resort at 1850 metres. This should obviously increase considerably over the weekend if we indeed get the 64cm of snow that’s forecast – fingers crossed!.

There are currently 33 lifts (out of 49 = 67%) open in the Grande Domaine ski area of which 22 are in Alpe d’Huez itself, these lifts are serving 44 pistes (out of 89 = 49%), of which 22 of these pistes are in Alpe d’Huez. 20 of these pistes are green, 9 blue, 9 red and 6 are black.

Away from Alpe d’Huez there are 3 green runs open in Auris-en-Oisans (across the scare chair) – these are in the bowl area around the village itself. There are also 3 runs open in Villard Reculas, and the blue run “Villard” from the top of the Signal is both open and in good condition. Even prior to the recent snowfall it was possible to ski all the way down to Oz-en-Oisans, these runs have benefited from the new snowfall.

Obviously more and more runs will open in the next few days after the snowfall and once the SATA pisteurs have had chance to groom the pistes. Now that all the slopes in the whole of the Grande Domaine ski area have received some fresh snow, fresh pistes will soon open up. There are currently 9km of Nordic trails open (the Poutran trail) and the walking trail up to the Lac Besson (1km) is also open.

Both the snowparks (the big one here in Alpe d’Huez and the smaller one over in Vaujany) remain closed at the moment, but with the new snowfall and more in the forecast it shouldn’t be too long before they are open.