I like Rolf’s answer.
Just from memory we had snow in October but it only really hung around above 2300m and then on North sector slopes. We then had a long period of fine, clear weather and this transformed that snow into a weak layer of goblets or depth hoar. This is typical every autumn/winter and normally sets up the avalanche risk.
What then happened, which is fairly unusual in the French Alps at least, is the first big winter dump, on the 7th December, was about a meter or more of snow. This kind of thickness tends to bridge the underlying weak layer so that it doesn’t present the same danger. Also such snow depths don’t tend to rot out (temperature gradient). We’ve then had subsequent falls but as Rolf said, these have been pretty deep too so during and immediately after the fall the risk goes up, largely due to spontaneous avalanches but once the snow has settled it drops back as there are few weak layers around (maybe some surface hoar formed in the first couple of weeks of January). The warm weather and high altitude rain has also stabilized the snowpack up to 2000+ meters. There have been some slab avalanche reports from the Hautes-Alpes where there has been less snowfall this winter and some pretty big natural slides (which have cleared out some of the last 10 years accumulations of brush wood, yipee).
Still not a single avalanche death in France, lets hope that record continues.
