A sudden blast of cold polar air accompanied by heavy precipitation led to heavy snowfall in the Alps at levels below 1600 meters. Read here (in German).
Snow falls in August under 1600 meters elevation in southern Germany.
Up to 35 cm of snow fell at some locations. Wetter.24 reports:
Low pressure system “Christine” delivered heavy rains in southern Germany and even the first snow in the Alps. Some passes in the Alps had to be closed. After steady snowfall, several Swiss Alp passes had to be closed for traffic on Friday evening. Streets around the Gotthard range were hit especially hard by the snowfall.”
Imagine the surprise of German vacationers returning from Italy over the Alps and being told to turn back because of snow in the summertime! Wetter.24 continues:
The snow line dropped from the northwest and then a cold polar air mass was fed down to the Alps region (see Figure 3).
Snow line at times at 1600 meters. On Friday it was already snowing at 2000 meters and during the past night the snow line dropped to 1600 meters, and even less at some localities, thus many peaks are now covered with a blanket of snow.
A total of 21 cm of snow fell on Säntis from Friday morning to Saturday morning. On the Zugspitze 45 cm was reported, of which 35 cm fell during the last 24 hours. The rest fell during the night of Thursday to Friday (see Fig. 4). In the figure it can be seen that especially the north side is hit by the first snowfall. It is however not unusual that winter shows up for the first time in the Alps at the end of August.”
Oh, now I get it: snowfalls and skiing are “rare and a thing of the past” only in the dead of winter. But snows in August, on the other hand, are completely normal?
Gee, climate science is making more and more sense with every passing day.
Finally, I was just sent the following chart depicting Germany’s summertime temperatures for the last 16 years.
Runaway warming? Looks like it ran away for good 10 years ago – and it’s not coming back. (Chart from Josef Kowatsch).