Winter regime in snow dominated catchments

The Piave basin has a continental-temperate climate, typically humid,that is common for many areas located in Southern Alps. The climatic characteristics change from zone to zone due to the infuence of factors as elevation or exposition. The rainfall regime is subcoastal-alpine, usually presents two peaks of precipitation during spring and fall and two minima in winter and summer. Despite the winter season is the driest of the year, the minimum curries in July; rainfall rate are higher during fall, particularly in November, and during spring. Moreover the period September-October-November is always wetter than the winter period December-January-February andstorms are quite a commonly observed during summer. Even if the trend could be very different from the annual mean, February shows coldest temperature while July and August the highest. Frequently, during winter, the temperature falls under the O ° but is quite usual that the daily maximum rise up to positive values almost every days. Consequently a lot of areas are iteratively afected by snowfall and snowmelting.
The pre-alpine region (including the boundary between the Belluno and Treviso provincial administration, the Norther face of Mount Grappa and the Piave valley up to Belluno and Alpago) presents yearly rainfall between 14OO mm to 16OO mm, the maximum is reached in a limited area nearby the Mount Grappa with almost 17OO mm and the boundary between Belluno and Pordenone provincial administration (17OO mm). In 1961-199O, the minimum annual rainfall registered has been around 1OOO12OO, and the maximum around 2OOO-22OO mm. The driset summer months brought about only 3O-6O mm and during winter around 7O-9O mm. During winter, the peak is registered in Mount Grappa, 1OO mm. June and November are the wettest, with almost 14O-16O mm.
The precipitation in the Alpine part of the catchments, corresponding to Northern part of the Belluno province, gradually decrease from South-East (Alpago) to North-est (Cortina D'Ampezzo). Along the boundary between the Veneto and Friuli regions the precipitation is uniformely high. The annual rainfall amount fuctuate from 11OO mm, nearby Cortina, to 16OO mm, in Souther part of the basin. Also in this part of the catchment February is the driest month, with 5O-9O mm, whereas the wettest months are June and November, (1OO-16O mm). On the basis of the foregoing is reasonable assert that, in general way, the hydrologic regime is characterized by a peak food event during Fall (in the period between October and December) when the amount of water dropping of is elevated, while during the Spring season the regime present a smoothed food events because of the double effect of rainfall and snowmelting.