Return of snow to the mountains next week: what to expect?

Since the beginning of autumn, there has been no snow cover on our many French massifs. The fault is a disturbed flow that is too gentle or a cooler, but dry flow. If snow quickly appeared in the Pyrenees and the Alps at the start of the week, the news is rather encouraging for the mountains with a view to next week.

A synoptic configuration favorable to the arrival of snow in the mountains

For the moment, France is subject to a flow becoming continental, that is to say from the northeast. Indeed, high pressures (anticyclone) tend to shift towards the British Isles, leaving the field open to a flow of water coming from Central Europe. While this brings temperatures down, it is also quite dry, not allowing precipitation to fall, except in the Pyrenees, closer to the cold drop located on the Iberian Peninsula.

Arrival of the northwest flow © LCM

This dry, but colder configuration will affect the entire country for the rest of the week until the weekend. But the situation will become interesting from Sunday, since the anticyclone will shift further towards the Atlantic, which means that the flow will shift to the north-northwest sector.

Under these conditions, the air will become more humid and further precipitation is expected. As the air will remain quite cool for the season, snow will return more widely across all the massifs this time, even in the Vosges and the Jura. Potentially, the rain-snow limit could drop enough to see white gold at altitudes below 600 m, but the trend is to be confirmed.

It is difficult at present to predict the quantities of snow that will fall on our mountain ranges. In this unstable northwesterly flow, there will be more snow showers, therefore intermittent, but which could sometimes accumulate a few centimeters.

A sustainable situation?

This cool and humid situation could continue for the last decade of this month of November, with therefore still snow on all of our massifs. However, this trend should become more reliable in the coming days.

snowy mountain © LCM

One thing is certain, this arrival of snow comes at just the right time just a few weeks before the start of the winter season in the mountains. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue for the beginning of December, before the holiday season.