Escape to the Dolomites

During the European heat wave we decided to escape to higher altitudes and spent a long weekend in the Dolomites, basing out of Wolkenstein in Gröden/Selva in Val Gardena, which is about 3 hours from Innsbruck by regional rail and bus.  Wokenstein/Selva is in South Tyrol (Süd Tirol in German) and was part of the Hapsburg Empire and "County of Tyrol" for more than 500 years.  After World War I, South Tyrol was annexed by Italy.  Under Mussolini, there were efforts to "Italianize" the region.  Cities were given Italian names and both German and Italian names are used today.  

Following WWI, South Tyrol has had a complicated relationship with Italy, but today is an autonomous region with considerable self-governing powers.  It is also one of the wealthiest regions of the EU with low poverty rates.  Many people in the region are multilingual, speaking German, Italian, English, and in some cases Ladin, which is still spoken by some families around the Dolomites.  

Wolkenstein/Selva is at 1500 meters, about 1000 meters higher than Innsbruck and while we were there we also observed cooling thunderstorms each afternoon.  It was a bit like hiking in Colorado.  Rise early, bag a summit, and retreat to the valleys by early afternoon. 

A morning summit of Sass da Ciampac with the atmosphere quickly destabilizing over the Sellagroupe.

In the winter, you can do a lift-served ski circuit around the Sellagroupe (pictured above), which is known as the Sellaronda. In the summer, enough lifts are run to enable a mountain bike Sellaronda, which is done most commonly with e-bikes using a day pass that costs 67 euro.  We weren't biking, but we bought the pass and spent a day doing what I called a "Quarter" Sellaronda involving about 15 km hiking and 10 lift rides, going from Wolkenstein to Sass Pordoi and back.  It's a nice way to cover a lot of ground and beats riding the busses.  

Hiking from the top of the Ciampinoi cable car to Passo Sella.  

The village of Canazei from the trail between the Pian Frataces cable car and Passo Pordoi

Piz Boè, the highest point in the Sellagroupe from near the top of the Sass Pordoi cable car

Our route also involved an excursion up the infamous 2-person Forcella cable car, also known as the "coffin lift."

The cable car is described on one web site as a two seater, but that's laughable since there's no sitting in that contraption.  You are just packed in there like a sardine with your partner.  

Getting on and off this thing involves commitment.  It is not a detachable and you have to jump in from the back.  Two lift ops start yelling encouragement to you as the lift approaches and you grab a handle as the lift goes by, spin, and jump in.  Your riding partner is a bit farther down the line and does the same thing a second later.  If you don't move fast enough, the lift ops shove you in.  Then they lock you in for the ride.  Videos were not allowed, but at great risk to personal safety, I was able to smuggle one out of Italy.

The Dolomites are very popular, but there are some areas that are really overwhelmed by the social-media crowd.  One day we decided to do a loop hike from the top of the Col Raiser cable car.  We began by ascending Seceda Alm (alm is pasture in German), whic was covered in flowers, green as Ireland, and offered some otherworldly views.  

Church in Seceda Alm

Sassolungo from Seceda Alm

But the real attraction here are the views of the Odle Group from the Mt. Seceda ridge line.  

It turns out this is probably the most popular trail in the Dolomites with many people taking the Mt. Seceda cable cars to just below the ridge.  A round trip on these is 76 euro, so we avoided them, but it should have clued us in that something was up.  When we got to the top, it was a mass of humanity, Due to overcrowding and littering, there is now a 5 euro charge to access one section of the ridge trail.  I couldn't help but think of the Yogi Berra quote, "nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded." We bypassed the queue and elected to hike elsewhere. 

Lesson learned!

Getting back to funner aspects of the weekend, when we arrived at our guest house there were a lot of ski trophies and photos including a bib from Salt Lake 2002.  It turned out the place was run by a real ski-racing family and the husband, Alan, competed for Italy in the slalom during the 2002 games (sadly a DNF). More recently, their son Max won two golds and one bronze at the 2023 Junior World Championships.  Hopefully they will be returning to Salt Lake in 2034. 

Some Updates

Great to see that temperatures in Salt Lake City have been quite pleasant the past couple of days.  Below is the time series from the University of Utah and after 90+ on Friday the 26th, temps have been below 75 since and as low as the low 40s.  

But I was sad to see that three firefighters were killed responding to the Knowles Fire in western Colorado.  Such a tragic reminder of the danger that wildland firefighters face every day. 

Meanwhile here in Europe the heatwave has started to abate.  I was told that Innsbruck set an all-time record high on Saturday of 38.7C/101.6F (the old record was 38.5C).  We were out of town and at higher altitude so fortunately didn't experience it.  That's not as bad as observed in France and Germany and a few other lower-elevation areas that were above 40C/104F.  

Today (Tuesday, June 30) was our last full day in Innsbruck.  We have a short vacation before returning to Utah for the latter two-thirds of Hothouse July.  We look forward to being home and seeing family and friends, but this is a hard place to leave.  

 

The Threat to Eagle Point

The blog posts are coming fast and furious now as weather and climate extremes are having a big impact on several regions and in particular on wildfires in Utah.  

I woke this morning in Innsbruck and learned of the Cottonwood Fire that is burning and spreading explosively in the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver.  Utah Fire Info reports that it was discovered on Monday (June 22) and it has already burned 31,000 acres with 0% containment.  The most recent mapping from Utah Fire Info puts the eastern perimeter across the crest of the Tushar Mountains and the northern perimeter into the Eagle Point Ski Resort area.  Such mapping doesn't capture local details, so we can only hope that the homes and infrastructure there are still safe.  

Source: https://utah-fire-info-utahdnr.hub.arcgis.com/

Yesterday afternoon's Aqua/MODIS imagery from NASA shows a dense plume of smoke extending eastward from just east of Beaver, across the Tushar Mountains, Sevier Plateau, Capital Reef National Park, and San Rafael Swell.  Look closely and you can see a couple of white spots just downstream (east) of the Tushars that are likely produced by pyrocumulus clouds fueled by the intense heat and moisture fluxes from the fire.  My guess is that the updrafts producing these began upstream (west) of the Tushar Crest and grew in depth as they moved downstream, eventually producing the overshooting tops evident in the satellite imagery east of the Tushar Crest.

The explosive growth of the fire is really apparent in yesterday's satellite imagery.  This should be required viewing for anyone who wants to play with fireworks, light a campfire, or do other activities that can potentially cause a spark and eventually grow rapidly into a massive fire.  

Source: https://weather.cod.edu/satrad

There are only a couple of observing sites in that area that I could find.  One is the Beaver 15E site operated by the Utah Climate Center.  This is speculative and requires confirmation, but during the day yesterday the temperature at that site spiked to 110F, far hotter than the previous day and possibly a reflection of the intense heat from neary wildfire.  It appears that it survived, at least for now.  

Source: Mesowest

The wind sensor at that site appears to be DOA, but a bit to the north, Pacific Corp operates the Kays Meadow site.  That site illustrates well the meteorology that contributed to yesterday's explosive fire spread.  At around 1600 MDT, the RH was below 10% and winds gusted to 50 mph.  

Source: Mesowest

I'm not sure if that site was in the fire perimeter yesterday as it is close to the edge in the mapping on Utah Fire Info.  Also unclear is the degree to which those winds reflect the background flow or fire-driven flows.  Others with better data who are smarter than me will need to evaluate that as well as the accuracy of the wind sensor.  

Hope that some progress can be made through Thursday, because the forecast thereafter is very problematic.  The Euro for example brings a deep trough into the northwest United States and the forecast for 0000 UTC 27 June (1800 MDT Friday) shows the associated cold front over northwest utah with the Cottonwood fire area in strong, dry, southwesterly flow at 700-hPa.  

The NWS has already highlighted the critical fire weather conditions expected on Friday and Saturday.  

Source: NWS.  Downloaded 0153 MDT Wednesday 24 June 2026.

Update: 1130 MDT Wed June 24

KSL now reporting that Eagle Point was destroyed.  

https://www.ksl.com/article/51539013/cottonwood-fire-destroys-southern-utah-ski-resort

A sad loss, but let's hope there are no fatalities. 

Euro Heat and Utah Cooling

Much of Europe is in the grips of a heat wave with records falling in many areas.  France and Spain had the worst of it yesterday with high temperatures over 40C (104F) over a significant amount of real estate.  I see a 44.3C/111.7F in the plot below at one location in France.  Brutal.  

Source: https://www.meteociel.fr/observations-meteo/tmaxi.php?region=

Max temperatures get attention, but it is the minimums that kill.  This morning, minima in interior western France were above 25C/77F in some areas.  It's hard to open the windows and get much relief in such conditions.  

Here in Innsbruck it hasn't been as bad.  We're a bit to the east of the ridge axis and the highest temperatures and have the advantage of being at 580 meters/1800 feet in elevation.  The max temp yesterday was 34.7C/94.5F with a min this morning of 19.4C/67F.  We are fortunate to be renting a flat on the lower floor on the north side of a building that doesn't get a lot of sun.  We open the place up sometime in the middle of the night and then close it up at about 8 AM and that keeps it tolerable.  

We also have access to mountains.  On Sunday, a friend and I climbed the Nockspitze south of Innsbruck, which reaches 2400 meters where temperatures were tolerable.  So much so that I was able to hike down in pants and long sleeves to keep my dermatologist happy.  

Temperatures though are expected to climb higher through the end of the week.  For Saturday, the Austrian Weather Service, known as Geosphere, is forecasting a maximum temperature of 38C/100.4F.  The all-time high here is 38.5C/101.3.  That all time high was set on 30 June 2019, one day after we left here on our last long-term stay, so we've seen two of the more extreme heat waves here.  

That said, our lease runs out on Thursday and I turned in my grades today so my work here is done.  We will be living like nomads for a couple of weeks and are planning to move to higher elevations for a few days.  Not all are so fortunate and we have seen people checking on elderly neighbors over the past few days.  When we were here for the 2019 heat wave, our flat was on a higher floor on the south side of the building and much more uncomfortable.  Floor and aspect can make a big difference during these extremes. 

Meanwhile in Utah it looks like you might get a taste of a cool-down this weekend.  The models are advertising a deep trough to try to push into the area.  The lowest hights and coldest air don't look like they will quite make it, but a significant cool down does look to be in store with the Euro producing 700-mb (10,000 ft) temperatures of around -2C at 1800 UTC (1200 MDT) Sunday.

Enjoy every minute of that. July is coming. 

Bonneville Fire Meteorology

Yesterday (Sunday) morning in Innsbruck I woke to find a number of text and e-mail alerts concerning a wildfire near the University of Utah Campus.  As of 1000 CEDT here in Innsbruck and 0200 MDT in Salt Lake City, Utah Fire Info is reporting that the fire is human caused, has burned 495 acres, and is 5% contained.  Fire perimeter mapping shows the fire so far has burned between Dry Fork to the north and Red Butte Canyon to the south, including the Mount Van Cott summit and environs.  

Source: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/

The fire was "discovered" on Saturday afternoon.  Two aspects of the meteorology that afternoon and evening likely affected fire spread.  As shown in the meteograms below from the Mountain Meteorology lab at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon, the relative humidity that afternoon was only 15%. During that period, the winds were relatively weak and variable, with directions mainly from the west to north, but at about 1930 MDT, the winds increased and became more consistently north to northeasterly.  The peak gust of 25 mph was at 2044 MDT.  Although temperatures lowered and relative humidity increased, the winds likely led to rapid fire spread.  

Source: https://mesowest.utah.edu/

The increase in winds was caused by outflow from convective storms in northern Utah.  Evaporative cooling from precipitation produced by these storms created cold pools that spread southward.  The leading edge of these cold pools is known as a "gust front" and is often is associated with a wind shift and rapid increase in wind speed.  Gust fronts are often dry, but can be detected in radar as a line of enhanced radar reflectivity, caused by greater concentrations of bugs and other non-meteorological targets, as was the case on Saturday.  

Radar image from 0040 UTC 21 July/1840 MDT Saturday 20 July. Radar image source: ral.ucar.edu.

A few hours after the strong winds produced by the gust front, the winds settled into a cycle that is typical of what happens near the University of Utah when there are relatively quiescent large-scale conditions.  At night, the flow becomes steady out of the northeast.  These are downslope and down valley (in the case of Red Butte Canyon) drainage winds.  The mountain meteorology lab probably observes some of the stronger winds in this area because it is at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon where there is a valley exit jet.  During the day, the flow becomes lighter and more variable, although the tendency is for the winds to initially become southwesterly to westerly in the late morning, consistent with upslope flow, and then shift to northerly with time as the larger-scale up valley flow in the Salt Lake Valley and the lake-breeze strengthen during the day.  These transitions are very apparent in the meteogram for the mountain meteorology lab.  

Meteogram source: mesowest.utah.edu

As I write this, it is nighttime in Salt Lake City, and one can see the predominant NE flow in the foothills around the University of Utah in the surface-map from roughly 0200 MDT Monday 22 June. The strongest winds are at the Mountain Meteorology Lab at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon and also near the mouth of Emigration Canyon.   

Source https://www.weather.gov/wrh/hazards

Forecasts for today (Monday) suggest such a wind cycle will predominate near the fire through Tuesday morning.  The NE flow will persist overnight tonight and into tomorrow morning, and then shift to southwesterly to westerly with surface heating as the upslope flow develops.  The HRRR forecast valid 1600 UTC (1000 MDT) Monday shows the development of W-SW winds near the fire area by mid morning.  Note though that there will be some fluctuation in wind direction during this light-wind period.

Then, in the afternoon, the winds veer to NW-N as indicated by the HRRR forecast valid 2100 UTC (1500 MST) Monday.  

Finally, Monday night, the NE drainage flow predominates, as illustrated by the HRRR forecast valid 0800 UTC (0200 MDT) Tuesday.  Note that the HRRR though cannot produce the local valley winds and exit jets (the background terrain in this plot is the actual terrain...the HRRR does not resolve the canyons in the Wasatch Range).  Adding such details is an important consideration for the incident meteorologists who may be working on the fire.  

From a wind perspective, this is a best-case scenario in the sense that these local flows are what you get when the large-scale flow is quiescent.  Whether or not we might see some flies in the ointment after today (Monday) is TBD.  There are a couple of weak troughs advertised by the models mid week that might provide some minor wrinkles and possibly a stronger trough over the weekend that could more strongly affect the fire-weather conditions.  Continue to monitor official forecasts and notices and hopefully fire crews can make progress on containment in the next couple of days.  

The Großglockner Hochalpenstraße

There are many great drives in the world, including some in Utah.  One that is surely on the list is the Großglockner Hochalpenstraße (Grossglockner High Alpine Road) in the Hohe Tauern National Park of Austria.  

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road is the highest surfaced road in Austria, reaching 2504 meters (8215 feet).  There is also a cobblestone spur road that will take you to the 2572 meter summit of the Edelweissspitze. We drove the road from north to south and then back in the same day.  It's not peak season here yet, so parking and pulloffs were not busy, but still the road was full of tourists (like us), bicycles, motorcycles, Porsches, and various "supercars."

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road was built in the 1930s and reminded me of the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park and other National Park scenic roads in the US that were built in that same era.  It takes a sinuous route to and from the high altitudes.  

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road from Edelweißspitze

Our route took us first up the Fuscher Valley, a deep U-shaped valley with as much as 2400 meters of relief to the highest peaks.  Cascades and waterfalls tumble through green meadows.  It's very spectacular.

The higher elevations were more glaciated even only a few years ago.  Interpretive stops discussed ice falls from calving glaciers that no longer extend from flatter areas to the edge of steep terrain.  Austrian glaciers are not just retreating but disintegrating.  

After crossing two mountain passes, we began to descend into the Mölltal (Möll Valley).

Eventually we took a side road 8 km to the Kaiser Franz Josef viewpoint of the Grossglockner, Austria's highest peak (3798 meters).  Beneath the Grossglockner is the Sandersee, a glacier lake that began to form in the 1950s due to the melting of the Pasterze glacier.  Currently, the Pasterze glacier is Austria's largest glacier, but that may change soon.  There is a narrow neck, known as the Hufeisenbruch, that connects the upper and lower Pasterze (red circle).  That neck is narrowing and the Pasterze expected to split in two in the near future.  When that happens, it will be classified as two separate glaciers. 

The Kaiser Franz Josef viewpoint is beautiful but about as industrialized as you can imagine.  It has a massive parking garage and even a long tunnel that will take you through the mountain if you want to hike to the upper Pasterze.

Fortunately it wasn't very busy while we were there.  

Near the southern end of the road is the mountain village of Heiligenblut.  If you go to the right place, you can find a quintessential view of their church and the Grossglockner.  

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road is a toll road and for a vehicle it is 46 euro for day pass.  It's a touch cheaper for a motorcycle and completely free for a bicycle, although accident insurance is recommended and costs 4 euro (mountain rescue in Austria can be costly).  

One tip is to stay at a hotel or guesthouse that is a partner with the National Park Summer Card.  THe summer card gives you a free day of access to the Grossglockner High Alpine Road and you can get free access to one of the sixty attractions included in it each day.  For example, one day we visited the Krimml Waterfalls and other day we used the Rudolfhutte cable cars for hiking.  Such cards are common in the Alps and worth looking into.  For this trip, we rented a car (it was my first time driving in over 3 months!), but for others, such visitor cards often provide free transit access.