The avalanche bulletin format has been revised to coincide with the start of the 2012/13 winter season. Not only is the new format easier to read on the internet and smartphones, but the content has also been improved in a variety of ways.

Available languages: German English French Italian

India is regularly associated with heat, spicy food, masses of people – and avalanches? Although not a phenomenon that immediately springs to mind, Indian avalanches are part and parcel of everyday life at the moment for SLF employee Yves Bühler. At the beginning of April 2012 he left Switzerland with his family to work for three months at the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) in Manali.

Available languages: German English

A new Swiss test-site for avalanche experiments has been built to study the overall dynamic behaviour of dense-flow and powder-snow avalanches and to measure avalanche impact forces along their path. The site began operation in 1997/1998 and is a milestone of avalanche dynamics research at the WSL-SLF.

Available languages: German English French

Wir erforschen kleinskalige granulare Flüsse im Labor. Unser Ziel ist es, die Dichte und interne Spannungen zu modellieren, die für das Fliessverhalten von Murgängen und Lawinen entscheidend sind.

Available languages: German

White Risk is the SLF app for all those who engage in winter activities in the mountains outside marked and open pistes. It gives access to the interactive avalanche bulletin in German, French, Italian and English, as well as the latest snow and weather data for Switzerland. White Risk also provides useful background knowledge to assist in assessing the avalanche danger.

Available languages: German English French Italian

Within the framework of an international research project, the SLF and its German and Austrian partners are using a radar system to conduct a non-destructive investigation of the snowpack from underneath. The goal is to observe the individual layers of the snowpack and their properties and change over time.

Available languages: German English French Italian

Im Frühling gleiten vielerorts Nassschneelawinen bis ins Tal. Bisher wurde jedoch kaum systematisch erforscht, wie diese Lawinen genau entstehen. Das SLF hat deshalb mehrere Forschungsprojekte dazu gestartet.

Available languages: German French

In the field of natural hazards there is a strong need for process models. Researchers of WSL develop a unified software package, for both research and practice, where different kinds of processes are combined in one tool. The package consists of the process modules debris flow, rockfall, snowcover and avalanche, a protect module and a visualization module.

Available languages: German English French Italian

Information on the expected volume and flow velocity of the avalanche are used to estimate the necessary dam height by a rule of thumb. However these estimation requires expert knowledge to judge the influence of factors such as terrain structure, expected flow characteristics of the avalanche and dam geometry in a proper way.

Available languages: German English

Numerical simulations of natural hazards are based on digital terrain models. We investigate the advantages and disadvantages of different remote sensing based technologies to generate such terrain models for high alpin regions.

Available languages: German English