The weather in Bavaria has brewed a dangerous mixture of snow. Now there was a first avalanche victim in the Bavarian Alps. The situation remains critical.
Munich – The weather in Bavaria is already experiencing a significant change. It is getting warmer, the German Weather Service (DWD) expects up to eight degrees by Monday at the latest. At lower altitudes this means: goodbye snow and hello rain, in the Alps this should increase the avalanche danger even more. Because while snow and rain alternated at lower altitudes and rarely anything was left lying around, at least until Thursday, it has been snowing incessantly on the edge of the Alps for the past few days.
Attention hikers and tourers: Dangerous snow mixture in the Alps
On Thursday night alone, up to 60 cm of fresh snow fell in the Alps. In addition, there was a stormy wind on Friday evening, which carried the snow on and accumulated in congestion. Drift snow is then called. And it is not without danger
And even before that, the Bavarian mountains experienced very different weather and thus very different snow. At the end of November under the influence of high pressure, the sun shone on a thin layer of snow, at night the whole thing froze again under a clear, cold sky. Then it snowed on it again and again in various forms. Now again snow, snow drifts, of which the DWD is currently warning clearly in all of southern Bavaria, also on the streets and at the weekend higher temperatures and thus wetter snow and even rain.
Weather in Bavaria: The risk of avalanches in the Alps increases over the weekend
The whole mixture, the little hold between the layers of snow, the snow drifts dangerously hard at individual points and far too often on a loose surface, all of this means that the avalanche danger in the Bavarian Alps increases unusually early this year. In addition, ski tours and snow hikes, even in higher altitudes, have been a trend since the beginning of the corona pandemic, and the greater the risk of accidents. Warning level 3 of 5 possible levels currently prevails in large parts of the Bavarian Alps. That doesn’t sound like much, but DWD meteorologist Sebastian Altnau does the math: “Level 3 is forecast for about 30 percent of the time in the winter season, but is responsible for around half of all fatalities from avalanches.”
Use on Friday morning: woman carried away by avalanche in the Chiemgau Alps and buried
And so on Friday morning an avalanche buried a woman in the Chiemgau Alps and seriously injured her. The 41-year-old fell into a steep gully at the summit of Hochgern and slipped several hundred meters down the slope, as the mountain rescue service in Ruhpolding announced on Friday. That’s how she triggered the avalanche. A snowshoe hiker saw the accident and made an emergency call.
The woman was rescued on Friday morning with the help of a helicopter and taken to a hospital. Since it was not known whether other people were buried, an avalanche operation with a police helicopter and avalanche dog handler was started. Further victims could be excluded.
The change in weather in Bavaria could make the snow even heavier – and thus exacerbate the avalanche danger again at the weekend. Anyone planning a tour or an alpine winter excursion should therefore take another look and generally avoid steep slopes.
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