Heavy snow prompts Austria avalanche warnings

Continuing heavy snow fall in Austria’s Alpine regions raised the risk of avalanches today and prompted urgent safety warnings to hikers and skiers to avoid the areas deemed most prone to snow slides.

Strong winds and snow fall of up to 120 centimetres (47 inches) in sections of Styria, a mountainous province in southern Austria near the border with Slovenia, put the avalanche risk there at four on a five-point scale on which five is the most dangerous stage, according to the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna.

The institute warned that it would be “very inadvisable” for anyone to venture out on skis in those conditions.

The avalanche risk was also high in the Alpine provinces of Tyrol and Salzburg.

Several snow slides have already occurred over the past days in Tyrol, the Austria Press Agency reported, though there have so far been no reports of any people being trapped beneath them.

Last winter’s 48 avalanche deaths made the 2004-05 skiing season the second deadliest in Austria in the past 30 years, according to a report by the Interior Ministry and the Austrian Mountain Rescue Service.

Only the 1998-99 season, in which 50 people were killed by avalanches, was deadlier, the report said.