It often snows at altitude in September, but the levels seen over the past few days in places have been described as ‘unprecedented’ by weather experts.
Snow is falling to as low as 700m in Austria with as much as 2m expected to fall at altitude by the end of Monday.
Austrian storm warning centre UWZ says that in some areas, previous records for the entire month of September will be “surpassed in just a few days”.
Manuel Kelemen, a forecaster for Puls24 TV, said “what we’re experiencing is extraordinary, if not unprecedented”.
“Although occasional (mostly) high-altitude snowfalls are nothing unusual in September, this degree of storm is not something we have seen this early for many years and it will probably end up dumping record snowfalls (for the time of year) across some parts of Austria,” said Fraser Wilkin from weathertoski.co.uk.
“Many other Alpine regions have also seen significant snow at altitude, but it is mostly in Austria where the early winter onslaught appears unusually severe.”
It is being described as a 1 in 50 year event by the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic where there has been heavy flooding.
The Austrian ski resort of Obertauern has seen some of the largest falls:
