A wintry surprise this morning: snow is back in the Dolomites!
A mass of air from the north brought temperatures down from 20 to 0 degrees in just a few hours in many Dolomite resorts.
The cold air accompanying a weather front literally transformed the mountain scenery, leaving a fantastic white blanket on the ground as if it were the middle of winter. The snow covered the meadows with a layer ranging from half a centimetre up to the 5-10 centimetres that fell at the highest altitudes. Not all of the Alps were affected by the front, which instead hit the regions of north-eastern Italy particularly hard, with Veneto and Friuli at the top of the list.
An unforecast snowfall that took pretty much everyone by surprise, especially those who had headed up into the mountains planning a nice hike across green meadows.
No green meadows but a winter scene, and very nearly time to put the skis on, in Friuli, where the snow cover reached 10cm above 1,800 metres.
A far from negligible depth on the Venetian Prealps too, where the snow cover reached 5cm above 2,000m. Just a light dusting for the border areas in South Tyrol and no snow party for the resorts to the west.
But the most remarkable detail of this spring snowfall was the altitude. Snow at 1,400-1,500 metres on May 15! Not a rare event, but not all that frequent either.
The ones to benefit are the glaciers, which unfortunately are already grappling with the “summer” melt.
Somewhat less pleased are the mountain tourism operators, already geared up to welcome visitors ahead of the 2011 summer season.
However, the weather forecasts predict a return to normal in the coming days, and the experts are labelling this May 15 snowfall an exception.
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