© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
© Rob Wood
The sun has returned to Alpe d'Huez
The sun is back and the pistes are in great condition
This morning, we awoke to mainly blue skies, sunshine, light cloud cover and, more importantly, light winds. It was a welcome return of the sun! Unsettled weather has been dominating things here in resort for the last 10 to 14 days with high winds being especially problematic.
Sunday saw strong winds with gusts in excess of 140km/h being reported up at higher elevations. This led to the closure of all of the lifts for the whole day, with the only exception being the Rif Nel nursery slope drag lift. Winds had dropped by Monday but were still strong enough to keep all the lifts closed until 14:00, and even then only lifts below 2300 metres were able to open.
Thankfully, by Tuesday winds had dropped down to around 15km/h and all the lifts returned to action. These winds and unsettled weather have followed Storm Dylan and Eleanor across the Atlantic and were linked to some warm moist air coming up from the Mediterranean thanks to the Sirocco wind. Tight isobars and barometric pressure down at around 980Mb led to inevitable high winds and lift closures.
Thankfully, the weather has settled down now and the winds have dropped right off – phew! Barometric pressure has risen to 1020Mb as high pressure is now well and truly in control here in the Alps. The isobars are now nice and widely spaced and this looks set to be the case for the next 5 days, so the weather looks set to be nice and settled until early next week. A significant snowfall is in the forecast for Tuesday 16th into Wednesday 17th January, when around 60cm of snow are potentially on their way to us.
Freeze height is currently at around 1100 metres, below that of all the slopes, and this looks set to remain for the foreseeable future, which is good news for the snow condition. Next week's snow could run through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after which conditions will be great and the 7 to 14-day forecast looks set to be sunny.
After Monday night's snowfall, on-piste snow cover currently stands at:
- Alpe d’Huez resort (1850m) - 160cm
- Pic Blanc (3300m) - 175cm
- Auris village (1650m) - 85cm
- Auris Signal (2176m) - 90cm
- Villard Reculas (1500m) - 65cm
Meanwhile off-piste cover currently stands at:
- 2500m: North - 275cm, South - 235cm
- 2000m: North - 185cm, South - 160cm
- 1500m: North - 85cm, South - 45cm
- 1000m: North - 20cm, South - 0cm
Snow currently lies up to an elevation of around 1000m, well below the lowest of pistes in Alpe d’Huez. Avalanche risk stands at 2 out of 5 at elevations below 2500 metres, rising to 3 out of 5 at the very highest of elevations between 2500m and 3300 metres. As is always the case, take care and respect the mountain – if you have any doubts consult the nearest Sata Ski “liftie” – don’t be a hero!
Now that the winds have dropped we have 45 lifts open, and these are serving 73 pistes. Of these 73 pistes, 23 are green, 20 are blue, 17 are red and 13 are black so there really is something for everybody at the moment. The legendary Sarenne black run up at the Pic Blanc (3300m) is in particularly nice condition and, after Monday's snowfall, this is the case for its entirety all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. 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.
There are currently also 32km of wonderfully prepared Nordic ski trails open and 26km of fabulous walking trails.
Lift queues are pretty short now as the festive period has finally come to an end. The last of the families look set to leave resort this weekend and, with most universities back on campus next week, lift queues should be even shorter from Saturday.
The days seem to be a getting a bit longer as well which is always nice. Sunrise this morning was 08:13 and, with sunset at 17:13, we had 9 hours of daylight today. This will obviously keep getting better every day.
Bon ski!
