Deep Snowfall Buries Parts of The Austrian Alps! (credit: Cyclone of Rhodes)

DISCUSSION: As a strong low pressure system slowly made its way across the higher terrain of central Europe just a few days ago, many places across central Europe experienced pronounced effects predominantly defined by unprecedented snowfall totals.  As seen in the video above which was captured by a researcher positioned on the Stubai Glacier (which is located in far western Austria).  Note how deep the fresh snowfall is as the woman in the video above proceeds to walk towards a brick wall.  In many cases (especially in situations with snowfall events occurring in areas at particularly high elevations), there tends to be a situation wherein heavier snowfall totals are more prevalent during large-scale snowstorms.  This is a result of an atmosphere-driven, Earth-derived process referred to as orographic enhancement.  

Orographic enhancement occurs as a consequence of air parcels situated within larger-scale air masses moving towards a region of higher terrain being forced to ascend up and along fairly steeply sloped terrain.  As this process occurs, the associated moisture which is contained within the given air mass is forced to expand rapidly.  As the air parcels continue to expand, the air mass continues to cool and often forces the associated air parcels to more quickly reach an associated relative humidity of at or close to 100%.  Thus, under the right conditions and circumstances, large quantities of moisture are effectively "squeezed out" and released in the form of precipitation.  In this situation, this process produced a plethora of fresh snowfall in the mountains of western Austria  as well as surrounding areas.

To learn more about other high-impact winter weather events from around the world, be sure to click here!

~Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz