Credit: WeatherBell
A two-wave storm cycle will refresh much of the Alps from Saturday night through Wednesday afternoon, with the best snowfall lining up from the northern and western Alps into parts of Austria and Switzerland. Guidance is well clustered on a light first shot Saturday night into Sunday morning, then a broader and stronger round from Monday afternoon into Tuesday night, which should leave many favored resorts with 40-80 cm and push Wengen close to 100 cm by the time the cycle winds down. Snow levels stay low enough for snow at nearly all resort elevations through the main event, while the Dolomites, especially Cortina, remain on the fringe. Confidence is highest from Saturday night, March 28, through Wednesday afternoon, April 1.
Saturday night into Sunday morning looks like a clean, modest refresher rather than the main event. The models converge well on timing, coverage, and snow levels here, with snow spreading across most of the Alps overnight and tapering back by late Sunday morning. Western and northern resorts should do best in this opener with around 5-15 cm, while southern and eastern areas see just a few centimeters or stay nearly dry. Snow levels generally run around 400 to 800 meters, and wind guidance is similarly clustered and modest, so precipitation stays snow at almost every ski area and SLRs near 15-17 should keep this first round fairly light.
The more important part of the forecast arrives Monday afternoon and peaks Monday night through Tuesday, then gradually tapers Wednesday. Guidance still converges on the timing and intensity of the main push, on snow levels falling from roughly 900 to 1,100 meters at onset to below 500 meters by Tuesday, and on a windy but manageable period for exposed lifts with periodic 40-60 km/h gusts. It diverges more on how much leftover snow hangs on Wednesday, but there is still enough agreement on a slower taper to carry specific totals through Wednesday afternoon. Snow quality should stay good with SLRs mostly in the 14-18 range, and a broad swath of the northern and western Alps should be sitting in the 35-60 cm range for this second wave alone, with locally more, while the Italian side stays much more uneven.
After Wednesday, the pattern turns much less certain and much less productive for most ski areas. Most guidance dries the Alps out Thursday and Friday, with only spotty showers and much smaller accumulations, and any snow that does fall looks denser with snow levels generally rising into the 1,200 to 1,700 meter range. There is some support for a weaker weekend pulse, mainly for the northern Alps, but the models diverge on timing, coverage, snow levels, and wind impacts, and they still disagree on whether it organizes into a true storm, so that part of the forecast remains speculative. Farther out around April 8-10, one outlier solution tries to reload the range with a much bigger storm while most guidance stays far quieter, so the sensible read for now is a mostly dry finish to the week with only a watch on next week.
Resort Forecast Totals (Sat Mar 28 – Wed Apr 01)
Wengen (Jungfrau) – 66-97 cm
St. Anton – 39-58 cm
Samnaun – 38-57 cm
Verbier – 39-56 cm
Ischgl – 34-51 cm
Val Thorens – 33-47 cm
Sölden – 32-47 cm
Les 3 Vallées – 32-46 cm
Kitzbühel – 28-42 cm
Chamonix – 28-41 cm
Tignes – 24-34 cm
St. Moritz – 21-31 cm
Val d’Isère – 20-28 cm
Zermatt – 17-24 cm
Cervinia – 14-21 cm
Cortina d’Ampezzo – 2 cm