No snow here yet on our part of West Somerset coast but the temp hasn't been above freezing today. I used to live much higher up in the Blackdown Hills ( Devon) and I gather from my NDN that there was snow there yesterday. I tend to think of December as being relatively mild with "winter" kicking in Jan and Feb but a bit different this year. I lived out of the UK for 10 years so obviously missed some of the snow for which I am thankful. Got a nasty feeling it's going to be Pay back time this winter
I have just been in eastern germany myself for a week and we had a bit of snow, just right for the Christmas markets. The local area heavily relies on water, its a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and the waterways have been used for anything from transporting cattle to market, to delivering post and now mainly tourists from village to village. It used to be a necessity as the villages were not connected by road, only water - it’s still the case for some areas.
As they were heavily reliant on the weather, they have kept quite good weather records as past generations moved from using boats to skates during the winter month and needed to know when it would be safe. Recently, that has only happened in 2002, 2006, 2009 as it needs to be more than -10 for several days. I’m not sure about the last 10 years as I haven’t been back for a while. Most winters it’s somewhere down to -5 most days in January and February which isn’t quite enough for the canals but enough to go skating on the flooded meadows. The other interesting fact is that whilst there region is known for its waterways - the locals are actually complaining about the lack of water in their gardens as it hasn’t been raining very much in recent years.
Let me guess @Watsonia .... sounds like the Spreewald? or was it the Oder valley?
That's why my mother was so surprised when it snowed in November this year because my birthday every couple of years used to be the time when the first snowflakes came. Snowflakes in November in Berlin mean cold winter in January/February. A Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel shows a graphic with the average temperature in Germany since 1881. By chance I have a small screenshot from 4 February 2012. I had to make it bigger, and is a bit blurry.
That February was extremely cold and it stayed cold for 3 weeks. I looked daily into forecast (because of my family). Look what the Tagesspiegel makes of this month: The temperature in Germany in February 2012 was just -3C than average. Apart form the fact that I wonder how February in 1881 was -0.58C below average if they started measuring the temperature in the same year, what can be seen is a quite balanced scale with higher red in the recent 30 years, after the big freeze in 1986.
What the rain concerns, indeed East Germany is turning to a desert, but it's a home made problem. Around 350 years ago, the mixed forest was replaced with pine trees with the result that the entire region turned into sandy soil covered with pine needles and literally dries out. Where is no water, there is no rain. Whenever there is a low on the way with rain, it loses all the water until that area. The entire region suffers from the lack of water, and the politicians allowed Tesla to build a huge production line. You can't make it up.
You guessed right @Simone_in_Wiltshire, it’s indeed the Spreewald. I can’t believe it was only -3 c on average in February 2012. The screenshot is much more aligned with my memories. It can get bitterly cold in the region. I actually associate the area with the smell of pine trees, especially in summer and autumn. There was a lot of open cast mining and are regenerating with new planting and new man-made lakes. Not a lot of pine 😊. So hopefully the future looks a bit better (despite Tesla).
3 months down the road, and it looks like that my mini interpretation from November hits the nail. We will have a cold front from the east until March at least. The high above us might stay longer than 2 weeks, and the European forecast agrees that mid March will be the time when it decides if the cold continues. You know, if a high stays longer than 2 weeks, there is a high chance it stays for 6 to 8 weeks. The good news is that being in the last February week, this means the cold could end in the first week of April or mid April, as it does in a 5 years period.
The table proves that 2021 was extreme in every sense. What I don't understand is that they say that the Polar vortex breaks at the end of February and we will see the effect 3 weeks later (therefore mid March). On the other side, the Polar vortex broke mid December 2020, and we had the effect in April/May.
For all who have work to do and can't spend time counting the months, I did it just out of curiosity:
Amount of months with minus NAO: 1950-1955 45 minus 1956-1960 35 minus 1961-1966 38 minus 1967-1972 34 minus 1973-1978 38 minus 1979-1984 34 minus 1985-1990 29 minus 1991-1996 29 minus 1997-2002 38 minus 2003-2008 36 minus 2009-2014 39 minus 2015-2020 27 minus 2021-2022 13 minus
Amount of months with positive "3" NAO: November 1978 1x
Amount of months with positive "2" NAO: May 1956 1x May 1963 1x September 1969 1x November 1986 1x April 1987 1x February and September 1989 2x April 1990 1x May 1992 1x November 1993 1x December 1994 1x April and December 2011 2x December 2015 1x May 2018 1x November 2020 1x
From Dr. Stephen Warren, University of Washington (8/22/2007): The world record for low temperature was set at Vostok Station, Antarctica, on 21 July 1983. Cerveny et al. (2007) give this temperature as -89.4°C in their Table 2, quoting Krause and Flood (1997), who gave the same value.
I hope we don't get high pressure sticking around for weeks . High pressure generally means dry and we've had more than enough of that already this year.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
Sorry for the late reply, but I generally only answer at this time of the day, when my brain works at its best.
@pansyface What this says is that out of 864 months (1950-2022):
- there were 566 months with a NAO of "0" (means 66% quite balanced weather), of which were 263 negative (-0.) and 303 were positive (0.)
Speaking for the UK, a positive NAO in winter means warm/wet weather; a positive NAO in summer means warm/dry weather. A negative NAO in winter means cold/dry weather, and in summer means cold/wet weather.
34% of the months were quite disturbed.
- There were 267 months with a "1", of which 146 were negative (-1.) and 121 positive (+1.). Just as an example, August last year despite the heatwave for a few days had just a 1.47. July with its few days heatwave was in fact negative (-0.09), which I can confirm for Wiltshire, it wasn't really warm apart from the heatwave.
- There were 31 months with a NAO of "2", of which 14 months were negative (very cold and wet) and 17 were positive (very warm and dry).
- There have been 3 months that had a NAO of "3", of which 2 were negative in July 1993 and 2015, which means that there happened extreme conditions. The only positive "3" happened in November 1978, which was that month before Europe got the extreme cold and snow at the end of December lasting until February 1979. You remember all of that winter - from what I understand - because it was the winter of strikes and I saw in documentaries that patients were left outside hospitals in 1 meter high snow, which can be seen in the statistic as "-1.38" for January 1979 and "-0.67" for February 1979.
The NAO is used by weather forecaster for their models what weather will be like in the months ahead. It's interesting to see from the past when you know there have been extreme winter/summer, what did the NAO say before the event happened.
- What the list overall says is that in the first 50 years since measuring the NAO, there have been almost as many months (8) with a negative -2. as we had in the last 22 years (7), which confirms the saying "there have been more extreme events".
- There were far more months with a negative NAO between 1950 and 1955 than on any other time later on. Between 1985 and 1996 have been far less negative months, which is repeating again since 2015 with even less negative months. When people say, the weather in the 50's when they were child was "normal", they only interpret colder and wetter months as "normal". Unfortunately, we have no data for the 1930's when Hercule Poirot went to Egypt to get out of England and the constantly falling rain
- In other words, the "Climate Changes" can be seen in that table, but 70 years is a too short time to make any conclusions, and in particular, the understanding of why certain events happen is still not understood amongst the experts. Scientists in a few hundred years will know more.
- That's what they confirm when they try to explain why
certain events happen. Last year for example, they discussed why the
heatwaves happened at all (which was a physical event that warm air
wasn't stopped and broke through to us). We had an unusual situation that all the 5 Highs around the world (Azores High
is for us important) were sitting above their normal positions (around the Equator), and I
remember the BBC forecaster saying "we don't know why this is". Because of the positions of the Highs, it was much warmer and drier in India/China too.
The equivalent of the North Atlantic Oscillation is the South Atlantic Oscillation, and because the South has got less land surface then the North, they concentrate more on the oceans, what we know as El Niño and La Niña.
I do hope we are not affected by this too @JennyJ . In one of the discussions last year, I remember that one forum member said, her husband forecast a washed out summer for this year.
When we look back however what happens in these years (since I'm here) when March/April gave us snow (2008, 2013, 2018), a cold Spring was followed by a well balanced warm and dry summer, I'm afraid. Not too hot, not too cold, but no rain. Good for tomatoes, bad for trees/plants that need rain.
@catexoticabngzQeMdSc- That is extreme. Looking at this winter temperatures, it seems that it was warmer this winter with -45C compare to areas in North Siberia where they had minus 60C.
This winter was quite cold what the North concerns. Asia and North America have had very cold weather with weeks of frost and snow/rain. The only reason why our winter was still mild compare to other regions is that we have a strong Golf stream and the Jetstream was in a good position which gave us rain up to January.
Posts
No snow here yet on our part of West Somerset coast but the temp hasn't been above freezing today. I used to live much higher up in the Blackdown Hills ( Devon) and I gather from my NDN that there was snow there yesterday. I tend to think of December as being relatively mild with "winter" kicking in Jan and Feb but a bit different this year.
I lived out of the UK for 10 years so obviously missed some of the snow for which I am thankful. Got a nasty feeling it's going to be Pay back time this winter
I ♥ my garden.
That's why my mother was so surprised when it snowed in November this year because my birthday every couple of years used to be the time when the first snowflakes came. Snowflakes in November in Berlin mean cold winter in January/February.
A Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel shows a graphic with the average temperature in Germany since 1881.
By chance I have a small screenshot from 4 February 2012. I had to make it bigger, and is a bit blurry.
That February was extremely cold and it stayed cold for 3 weeks. I looked daily into forecast (because of my family).
Look what the Tagesspiegel makes of this month: The temperature in Germany in February 2012 was just -3C than average.
Apart form the fact that I wonder how February in 1881 was -0.58C below average if they started measuring the temperature in the same year, what can be seen is a quite balanced scale with higher red in the recent 30 years, after the big freeze in 1986.
What the rain concerns, indeed East Germany is turning to a desert, but it's a home made problem. Around 350 years ago, the mixed forest was replaced with pine trees with the result that the entire region turned into sandy soil covered with pine needles and literally dries out. Where is no water, there is no rain. Whenever there is a low on the way with rain, it loses all the water until that area. The entire region suffers from the lack of water, and the politicians allowed Tesla to build a huge production line. You can't make it up.
I ♥ my garden.
I actually associate the area with the smell of pine trees, especially in summer and autumn. There was a lot of open cast mining and are regenerating with new planting and new man-made lakes. Not a lot of pine 😊. So hopefully the future looks a bit better (despite Tesla).
I have discovered another interesting statistic which is about the NAO.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/gpc-outlooks/ens-mean/nao-description
And here is the table: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/norm.nao.monthly.b5001.current.ascii.table
The table proves that 2021 was extreme in every sense. What I don't understand is that they say that the Polar vortex breaks at the end of February and we will see the effect 3 weeks later (therefore mid March). On the other side, the Polar vortex broke mid December 2020, and we had the effect in April/May.
For all who have work to do and can't spend time counting the months, I did it just out of curiosity:
Amount of months with minus NAO:
1950-1955 45 minus
1956-1960 35 minus
1961-1966 38 minus
1967-1972 34 minus
1973-1978 38 minus
1979-1984 34 minus
1985-1990 29 minus
1991-1996 29 minus
1997-2002 38 minus
2003-2008 36 minus
2009-2014 39 minus
2015-2020 27 minus
2021-2022 13 minus
A NAO of "-3" happened:
July 1993
July 2015
A NAO of "-2" happened:
1950-1999 8x
1962-1963 3x
1968 1x
1978 1x
1980 1x
1998 2x
2000-2022 7x
2002 1x
2006 1x
2009 1x
2012 2x
2019 1x
2021 1x
A NAO of "-1" happened:
1950-1959 27x
1960-1969 27x
1970-1979 17x
1980-1989 17x
1990-1999 12x
2000-2009 19x
2010-2019 22x
2020- 6x
Amount of months with positive "3" NAO:
November 1978 1x
Amount of months with positive "2" NAO:
May 1956 1x
May 1963 1x
September 1969 1x
November 1986 1x
April 1987 1x
February and September 1989 2x
April 1990 1x
May 1992 1x
November 1993 1x
December 1994 1x
April and December 2011 2x
December 2015 1x
May 2018 1x
November 2020 1x
I hope you can enjoy statistics like that as I do
I ♥ my garden.
@pansyface What this says is that out of 864 months (1950-2022):
- there were 566 months with a NAO of "0" (means 66% quite balanced weather), of which were 263 negative (-0.) and 303 were positive (0.)
Speaking for the UK, a positive NAO in winter means warm/wet weather; a positive NAO in summer means warm/dry weather.
A negative NAO in winter means cold/dry weather, and in summer means cold/wet weather.
34% of the months were quite disturbed.
- There were 267 months with a "1", of which 146 were negative (-1.) and 121 positive (+1.).
Just as an example, August last year despite the heatwave for a few days had just a 1.47. July with its few days heatwave was in fact negative (-0.09), which I can confirm for Wiltshire, it wasn't really warm apart from the heatwave.
- There were 31 months with a NAO of "2", of which 14 months were negative (very cold and wet) and 17 were positive (very warm and dry).
- There have been 3 months that had a NAO of "3", of which 2 were negative in July 1993 and 2015, which means that there happened extreme conditions.
The only positive "3" happened in November 1978, which was that month before Europe got the extreme cold and snow at the end of December lasting until February 1979. You remember all of that winter - from what I understand - because it was the winter of strikes and I saw in documentaries that patients were left outside hospitals in 1 meter high snow, which can be seen in the statistic as "-1.38" for January 1979 and "-0.67" for February 1979.
The NAO is used by weather forecaster for their models what weather will be like in the months ahead. It's interesting to see from the past when you know there have been extreme winter/summer, what did the NAO say before the event happened.
- What the list overall says is that in the first 50 years since measuring the NAO, there have been almost as many months (8) with a negative -2. as we had in the last 22 years (7), which confirms the saying "there have been more extreme events".
- There were far more months with a negative NAO between 1950 and 1955 than on any other time later on.
Between 1985 and 1996 have been far less negative months, which is repeating again since 2015 with even less negative months.
When people say, the weather in the 50's when they were child was "normal", they only interpret colder and wetter months as "normal".
Unfortunately, we have no data for the 1930's when Hercule Poirot went to Egypt to get out of England and the constantly falling rain
- In other words, the "Climate Changes" can be seen in that table, but 70 years is a too short time to make any conclusions, and in particular, the understanding of why certain events happen is still not understood amongst the experts. Scientists in a few hundred years will know more.
- That's what they confirm when they try to explain why certain events happen. Last year for example, they discussed why the heatwaves happened at all (which was a physical event that warm air wasn't stopped and broke through to us).
We had an unusual situation that all the 5 Highs around the world (Azores High is for us important) were sitting above their normal positions (around the Equator), and I remember the BBC forecaster saying "we don't know why this is". Because of the positions of the Highs, it was much warmer and drier in India/China too.
The equivalent of the North Atlantic Oscillation is the South Atlantic Oscillation, and because the South has got less land surface then the North, they concentrate more on the oceans, what we know as El Niño and La Niña.
I ♥ my garden.
When we look back however what happens in these years (since I'm here) when March/April gave us snow (2008, 2013, 2018), a cold Spring was followed by a well balanced warm and dry summer, I'm afraid. Not too hot, not too cold, but no rain. Good for tomatoes, bad for trees/plants that need rain.
@catexoticabngzQeMdSc- That is extreme. Looking at this winter temperatures, it seems that it was warmer this winter with -45C compare to areas in North Siberia where they had minus 60C.
This winter was quite cold what the North concerns. Asia and North America have had very cold weather with weeks of frost and snow/rain. The only reason why our winter was still mild compare to other regions is that we have a strong Golf stream and the Jetstream was in a good position which gave us rain up to January.
I ♥ my garden.