We provide the results of the joint analysis of the main climate variables and spatiotemporal distribution of 41 rockfalls that occurred in the Italian Alps between 1997 and 2013 in the absence of an evident trigger. We compared the meteorological conditions preceding the failures with the historical datasets, to determine if rockfall initiation was associated with some climatic anomaly. We found out that temperature anomalies were associated with rockfall occurrence in 83 % of our case studies.