© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
© Wayne Watson
Val d'Isere Snow Report: 7th February 2016
Windy with lots of snow this week
The past few days have been fantastic as we’ve skied beautiful snow in Tignes around the Grande Motte, followed by a terrific run in the Tour du Charvet before heading over the Col Pers at the Fornet on Friday, and Saturday morning we ‘skinned’ up to Mont Roup and were rewarded with some lovely skiing and total solitude.
But after a few days of stunning sunshine and fabulous snow we are now in for a pretty tough week ahead. I’m taking my first morning off this season as it’s blowing up to 120km/h at altitude with grey skies and a few flakes of snow floating about, and to be honest it isn’t very inspiring. The forecast is for strong winds and snow for the next few days and rumour has it we may see 2 metres of snow over the next week-to-ten-days!
The avalanche risk which was down to 2/5 the past couple of days is back up to 3/5 Sunday morning and will rise to 4/5 as soon as the new snow arrives. With the heavy winds transporting huge amounts of snow there will be serious accumulations in certain areas causing extremely high avalanche risk so caution will be an absolute must next week.
There was a tragic avalanche in Austria on Saturday after several days of heavy snow with a fatal slide with a least 5 dead that was one mile wide and 4 metres deep! I don’t know if that’s an exaggeration or not but that is a monstrous and devastating avalanche on an epic scale. Keep an eye on the news for further developments.
Weather in the village:
- Monday- Snow -8C/+2C Wind from the W at 20 gusting to 75km/h
- Tuesday- Snow -3C/+1C Wind from the S at 5 gusting to 90km/h
- Wednesday- Snow -9C/-5C Wind from the NW at 15 gusting to 95km/h
- Thursday- Rain/snow -8C/+1C Wind at 5km/h
- Friday- Snow/ partially sunny -6C/-2C Wind from the NW at 5km/h
The winds at altitude will be more violent so you can see that we are in for a potentially tricky week, both on and off-piste. Hopefully the wind won’t disrupt the opening of too many lifts but do listen to Radio Val in the morning for weather and piste reports.
If you fancy a day or two off the slopes the Centre Aquasportif is a fantastic facility, the ice skating rink is open after 2pm, there are Cross-country ski trails along the valley floor, and the cinema shows extra movies in English on bad weather days.
Good luck and have a great week!
PS—Monday’s forecast was totally wrong and instead of being blown off the mountain we had barely any wind at all and some sunshine in the morning. Combined with 15 to 20cm’s of fresh snow and it was one of the best off-piste mornings of the season. So the depressing forecast for this week may not turn out too badly at all!
For more updates on a daily basis, follow Wayne's blog.
