Knowledge of particle motion in snow avalanches is crucial to understand the driving pro-cesses, determining transport phenomena or to quantify the avalanche’s destructiveness and mobility. To investigate the dynamics of avalanches on a particle level we concentrate on the combination of two ap-proaches: measurement data of a newly developed inflow sensor system, the so called AvaNodes, and simulation results of the thickness integrated computational module com1DFA, recently introduced within the open avalanche framework AvaFrame. The AvaNodes travel with the avalanche flow as synthetic particles. Equipped with a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), it is possible to record particle trajectories with cor-responding velocities. Com1DFA is based on a numerical particle grid method, which due to its open-source structure allows for the direct implementation of numerical particle tracking functionalities. The combination of these two fundamentally different methods directly implies the question of comparability between simulations and measurements. We approach this by comparing the measurement and simulation data on a particle level and introduce a common reference system, an avalanche thalweg following coordinate system. The coordi-nate transformation and resulting, natural avalanche path perspective allows to investigate and compare the spatiotemporal evolution of velocities and to define travel lengths or travel angles in a standardized manner. Furthermore, this analysis allows us to distinguish distinct avalanche flow phases and their features on a particle level. With this work we highlight the potential and current limitations when comparing synthetic particle sensor systems to numerical simulation particles with an example of an observed avalanche event at the Nordkette test site, providing a first insight of how the presented methods can be used in terms of optimization and evaluation of simulation tools on a particle level. The analysis of the AvaNode sensor data points towards future potential in investigating the influence of snow and particle properties, such as size, shape, or density, on the avalanche flow. Keywords: Avalanche Dynamics, Avalanche Simulation, Sensor Nodes, Particle Tracking, AvaFrame com1DFA, Thalweg-Time, Thalweg-Altitude
