The Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) began to construct a network of high Alpine automatic weather and snow measurement stations in the Summer of 1996. Presently 50 stations are in operation. The stations measure wind, air temperature, relative humidity, snow depth, surface temperature, ground (soil) temperature, reflected short wave radiation and three temperatures within the snowpack. The measurements are transferred hourly to the SLF in Davos and the data are used to drive a finite-element based physical snowpack model. The model runs every hour and provides supplementary information regarding the state of the snowpack at the sites of the automatic stations. New snow amounts, settling rates, possible surface hoar formation, temperature and density profiles as well as the metamorphic development of the snowpack are all predicted by the model. The model is fully operational since the Winter of 1998/99 and will be used by local, regional and national avalanche forecasters.