REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND SPATIAL PLANNING ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA Department for snow and avalanches

By Janko Merše and Andrej Velkavrh

A short view of our service

• Founded in the 80-ies for the purpose of Civil protection

• Since then not many things were changed• The service is a part of a weather forecasting

department• Two persons are partially responsible for

maintaining the snow observations and writing avalanche reports during the winter season (november to may)

• Main problem in the lack of time, which leads also to the fact that we didn’t take part in the last two EAWS meetings

• No scientific work or research has been done since now, only operational

• Snow data are daily collected from 8 stations

• No automatic nivologic stations so far• Snow cover tests are usually made weekly; in

the case of stable snow cover also less than once a week

• Avalanche bulletin is issued three times a week; • Extra bulletins in emergency cases• Published ONLY on our web site

(WWW.ARSO.GOV.SI), but sent also to some special users

Slovenia has problems with snow avalanches, but compared with countries like Switzerland, France or Austria inhabited areas are not at such high elevations as there.

There are some mountain roads…

…or mountain passes, which are regularly caught by avalanches. Only in extreme winters some houses or villages could be endangered.

We have some ski resorts, which can be, regardless of rather low elevation, caught by wery intensive snowfall

Therefore our main goal during winter is dealing with mountain roads, tour skiers and alpinists. Injured and dead can bein 99% found among them.

• However, due to the topography, there have already been victims caught by snow avalanches below 500 m elevation

• There are quite often winter situations with increased avalanche risk in mid and lower altitudes due to intensive snowfall

Plans for the future

• Increasing the number of observation sites by implementing some automatic stations

• Improving the quality of information in our bulletin and it’s shape (in operation)

• Closer collaboration with EAWS due to get more knowledge and new ideas

• Implementing an objective method (a simple model or similar)