Here are 10 shots of the Southern French Alps from 11,000m (36,000 feet) to help illustrate the early Spring snow cover in this part of the Alps on late Monday morning 20 April 2026. Better put, to illustrate to continued lack of snow cover.

The flight flew due north from Nice and didn’t leave French airspace until crossing the border over Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) just south of Geneva, so I can say with some certainty that all of these photos are of the French Alps. (Please by all means correct me if I am wrong.)

As mentioned a few months ago in this post (with photos covering partially the same flight path), I fly the route regularly throughout the year including a handful of times in the winter and spring months. Then, the snow cover was the most I’ve seen over this patch of the Alps, but it’s largely gone now, having reached its 2026 peak by the end of February, according to Meteo-France’s March report. March 2026 showed an anomaly of +0.9 degrees celsius compared to the 1991-2020 normal, making it the fifth straight March that has been warmer than normal.

More March 2026 highlights from Copernicus:

– March 2026 was the fourth-warmest March globally, with an average surface air temperature of 13.94°C, 0.53°C above the 1991-2020 average for March, according to the ERA5 dataset. The warmest March on record was in 2024.
– March 2026 was 1.48°C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level.
– The average temperature over European land for March 2026 was the second warmest at 5.88°C, 2.27°C above the 1991-2020 average for March. The warmest March on record was in 2025.
– The average sea surface temperature (SST) for March 2026 over 60°S–60°N was 20.97°C, the second-highest value on record for the month. The warmest March on record was in 2024 during the last El Niño event.
– Much of continental Europe saw drier-than-average conditions. In contrast, Iceland, the northern UK, much of Scandinavia, many regions in the Mediterranean and the Caucasus were wetter than average. In some cases, heavy precipitation, often associated with the transit of storms, led to flooding.
– In the Arctic, the average sea ice extent in March was 5.7% below average, the lowest on record for the month, but only marginally below the previous March record set in 2025 (5.6% below average).
– Regionally, sea ice cover was most below average in northern Barents Sea and Svalbard region, and in the Sea of Okhotsk, both of which experienced much warmer-than-average conditions during the month.