There are two snow systems gearing up ready to cross the Australian Alps.
SNOW SYSTEM ONE
The first one begins very late on Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday morning. This is just a nice little system, nothing huge. A cold front passing through, with no prefrontal warm up (yay) and a nice little cold pool. Snow may lower to around 1400 metres delivering 2 to 10 cm, before easing later on Sunday.
-> So, Sunday has a nice little top up, for most alpine elevations.
THE NEXT SYSTEM IS BIGGER
The next one looks a lot better - for several model runs now. And that is one of the key ingredients for higher confidence.
Another key ingredient for higher confidence is the lowest number in the range of snow forecast. If these start with a number close to 0cm, then at least one model doesn't like the system.
We have the highest confidence when the range is tight, only a small spread, as it means all the guidance is on the same page.
As it stands on Thursday morning, the next snow system begins on Monday, delivers on Tuesday, and slowly eases on Wednesday.
The spread across the models isn't super tight, but at least shows a similar pattern from model to model:
The first four columns are the individual models. The CNS column is the straight average of these models. The AI column is our Jane's Weather AI Forecast, which may differ, especially if the models dive into the negatives too quickly at the start of a storm, or come out of the negatives too quickly at the end of a storm, and the AI model has learned from on mountain observations that in reality this isn't the case.
The AI model improves as more snow systems arrive as it learns from what actually occurs in each storm.
-> Next Monday into Wednesday may deliver 10 to 30 cm, but we'd like the ranges to tighten up to see more confidence in this.
