Well, that's November gone, and no snow.
Let's look back over this blog at when Warsaw experienced its first snow... (this is where blogging proves its worth as a form of popular record). We can see - well, not too anomalous. Having said that, there are rumours, whispers, from the south of Poland of an impending drought. Indeed, I can't remember proper rain since the second half of August. And people are talking about a warm (+12C) Christmas - will we get show this December? We did last year and the year before...
2010: 28 November (I missed it, but on my return to Warsaw on 29 November, it snowed and kept on snowing). December was snowy - in the UK too!
2009: 14 October (!!!) An absolute anomaly, the more so that November proved snow-free. However, the second half of December saw heavy snowfalls
2008: 22 November. Snow stayed around for a few days; December was not snowy at all.
2007: 14 November. It didn't settle for long, returned briefly a week later; December was pretty much snow-free too.
A final word about this year. Many's the time I've heard about it snowing (during communist times) on the May Day parade; white shirtsleeves and blouses with red neckerchiefs - and snow. Yet this year, it snowed on the evening of 3 May - free Poland's celebration of its Constitution Day. Bizarre when I think back - eight o'clock in the evening, it's still light outdoors - and there's the garden covered in snow.
This time last year:
Krakowskie Przedmieście in the snow
This time two years ago:
Ul. Poloneza bisected by S2 roadworks
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6 comments:
This makes great news!
Who the hells needs the snow and all problems (mainly traffic disruptions and accidents) it causes?
We already have an intense, potentially detrimental drought and to bring it to an end, we need precipitation in form of rain, not snow, falling on not frozen ground.
Great to have record of weather events from last year, but your blog does not cover warm winter of 2006/07 when first snow fell on 24 January 2007 - no snow in November nor December 2006...
Now some more stats:
average temperature of November in Warsaw is around 3.6C
Over the past decades the average temperature of the eleventh month were:
2001: +2.4C
2002: +4.1C
2003: +4.9C
2004: +3.7C
2005: +3.3C
2006: +5.9C
2007: +1.8C
2008: +5.2C
2009: +5.7C
2010: +6.0C
Conclusion: only three November brought below-average tempratures.
Average temperature in November 2011 was +3.0 - not much below long-term average, but over the last decade there were only two cooler Novembers - recently the weather has got us used to warm November, yet this one wasn't. November 2011 saw many days with morning frost and only thanks to high pressure systems we could not see snow (but hang on, have you read my post dated 27 November, there's photo evidence of something like snow there?).
North Atlantic Oscillation has perked up for good and may it keep pumping in warm air from the west.
Christmas thaw is phenomenon similar to zimni ogrodnicy i zimna Zośka - there are weather patterns that tend to recur at the same time of year...
BTW - remember our memorable morning journey to Warsaw last year in early December?
And now mark my words - expect the first snow on 6 December morning. It will melt quickly, but have the came at hand to keep the record!
errr "have the camera at hand" - I meant
Got it wrong this time...
Only by about 14 hours. There was a significant flurry between 9:20 and 9:40 on 7 December; the sky was full of swirling white flakes - I got quite excited looking at in. However, every last bit of it had all melted by 10:05.
And another thing - my gas bill for Oct+Nov 2011 was 25% lower than for Oct+Nov 2010.
The warmer the globe gets, the less greenhouse gases we need to expend to warm ourselves up :)
Watch out! A string of catch-up comments ahead!
I didn't see that snow - was busy at work.
But on 8 December around 2 a.m. there was a thin layer of snow on everything. By the morning it melted. Then on the same day I watched heavy sleet while driving to work. It didn't linger as well. I don't believe we'll see any snow this year, but OK, weather can feel free to take me aback!
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