It is not just the Alps that are having some strange weather (cold and snowy at altitude with continuing avalanche risk above 3000 meters) Australia is also being hit by some big storms with almost 4 weeks straight snowfall in New South Wales with 120cm falling over a period of 72 hours.
Now Australia may conjure up pictures of flat deserts, long beaches and deep blue ocean but it does have some alpine type skiing. As Zack Wasson writes "The recent storm, dubbed "snowzilla" was supremely un-Australian.Any other region of the world would have had the alpine of their resorts closed and the avalanche forecasting service would have been broadcasting a risk rating of ‘extreme’. Not in Australia, though. The resorts were open, the media was onboard, the weekend warriors were flocking to the slopes, and the non-existent avalanche service was still just that … non-existent."
Now there is not that much extreme terrain down under and the snow, or slush as it more often is, isn't conducive to slab avalanches but Wasson is concerned by the increasing death toll. There is a boom in backcountry skiing due to the limited vertical and terrain in ski resorts but due to the limited avalanche risk in resorts skiers have no "avalanche culture" to draw on when heading into the much more serious Australian backcountry. Wasson points out that a larger area is covered in snow in an Australian winter than in Switzerland.
http://www.mountainwatch.com/snow-news/enviro/23595196/Opinion---Avalanches,-The-Darker-Side-of-the-Storm - read the full article.