Another Cold Central European Winter Coming, Early Forecasts Show

It’s September and with it come signs of fall and expectations of winter.

Not again! Early forecasts point to another cold winter for Europe. (Photo credit: NOAA)

I’ve found some early winter prognoses of what Central Europe and Germany. I used to rely on Joe Bastardi for the euro winter forecasts, and he had a habit of being  correct. But he’s busy with his new Weatherbell now, and I’m not aware of him making euro-forecasts.

So I’ve had to look at other sources, and so far preliminary forecasts are signaling a snowy and cold Central European winter.

killikus.de here makes a comprehensive analysis for central Europe (in German) and presents its prognosis in its introductory box:

Prognosis for the winter weather and Christmas weather for Winter 2011/2012
Snow and water without end! Winter 2011/12 will be wetter than summer 2011.”

Killikus.de writes that the North Atlantic stream assured us warm and mild winters over the last decades, but since 2008 that situation has changed.

So since the year 2008 it is increasingly colder in the winter months and also wetter. As it appears now, the cold wet climate will pick up in the coming winter months.”

That means we ought to think about having snow shovels and road salt ready. And don’t put off the winter tyres. Killikus.de also cites an old North German farmer’s rule:

‘There are always 7 fat years that get followed by 7 lean years.’ The 7 fat years ended on 31 December 2008, and so ‘the 7 lean years will end on 31 December 2015’.  Until then, expect lots of rain and very cold winters.”

Killikus.de then explains how this is due to natural variations in northern hemisphere.

wetterprognose-wettervorhersage.de writes that the period September-November will be too cold and at times “considerably too cold”, and adds that eastern Europe and Scandinavia will lack precipitation. For the winter months of December – February:

…Eastern and Northern Europe will be significantly too cold. In Germany the 2011/2012 winter prognosis today looks as follows: mainly normal, but with cold spilling in at times from the east or north – considerably too much precipitation in January and February, whereby January 2012 will be rated too cold (January is the coldest winter month). The probability for a normal to cold 2011/2012 winter is higher than a winter that will be too warm.”

www.duessel-wetter.de does not make a winter forecast, but offers a fall forecast. First it writes that things dont’t look good for late September: Hope for a nice late summer in the middle of September has significantly diminished.

Only southeastern Germany will temperatures get above average! Otherwise things don’t look at all good. It looks like so-so autumn weather.

For Germany that means cool and wet. Duessel-wetter.de’s autumn forecast calls for a 32% chance the fall will be cooler, 30% chance it will be around normal, and a 38% chance it will be too warm. It should be pointed out that 38% chance is very low in these global warming times. Often  in the past chances of a warmer-than-usual winter were pegged at 70% or 80%…because it was thought CO2 was such a dominant driver.

Finally the National Weather Service  chart also indicates to cold for Europe in the months ahead:

36 responses to “Another Cold Central European Winter Coming, Early Forecasts Show”

  1. matti

    As the next winter[2012] will again be a LA NINA winter like 2011, look for similar winter conditions for 2012 except December 2011 is unlikely to be as cold as December 2010. Consecutive LA NINA winters tend to have the second winter slightly colder than the first , like 2000 and 2001 . I see the LA NINA lasting possibly through 2012 .

  2. matti

    I wanted to clarify my previous comments .
    The rule that the second consequtive La Nina winter being colder than the first applies more to North American environment . In Europe it is more of a mixed bag with about three cases[1950-1051,1955-1957 and 1971-1972] of the second La Nina winter being colder and two[ 1974-1976 and 1999-2001] being warmer.More recently in Europe[excluding 2011] there are fewer cold winters during La Nina winters than during El Nino or Neutral years. There are more cold winters during the Enso Neutral winters. So I think Europe’s average winter temperature will be cold but will not be as cold this winter as last winter as December is unlikely to be as cold as 2010. The exception may be the northern Europe and the more inland regions . For Berlin the mean winter temperature could be closer to 2-3 C [something like 1999-2001]compared to -1C last year [which was mostly due to the cold Decemeber of 2010] Generally over the next 20-30 years , winters are not going to get warmer as IPCC predicted in my opinion but start to get noticeably colder by the middle of this decade as both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans will be colder.

  3. R. de Haan

    For whatever it’s worth:
    Early winter snowfall forecast for Ireland and the UK
    http://iceagenow.info/2011/09/early-winter-snowfall-forecast-ireland-uk/

    1. Viv Evans

      From my observations in regard to plants (very early ripening of grasses, wild flowers, shrubs, tree fruits, often starting in July), and from the fact that even the house martins (a species of swallow) are gone, while generally they hang about until October – yep, it’ll be an early and cold winter in the UK.

  4. R. de Haan

    We continue to be effected by a low solar cycle.
    I agree with Matti we will be back into La Nina territory soon but I simply have doubts about the claims made about changes in the North Atlantic Stream (Gulf Stream), please read http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/

    What worries me more is the current developments at Katla Volcano which is under siege of a quake swarm accompanied by harmonic tremors and inflation according to the DGPS data.
    http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/

    A VEI 6 eruption could really screw our weather although from an agricultural point of view the timing couldn’t be better.

  5. DirkH

    A model (by the University of Seattle) shows that Arctic Sea Ice volume is at a record low. Says this German article:
    http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,784615,00.html

    The usual summer model fudging in warmist academia, I guess.

  6. R. de Haan

    It not only has grown, it’s also the shortest melt season on record.
    http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/climatechange/science/37271/shortest-arctic-melt-season-on.asp

  7. R. de Haan
  8. MostlyHarmless

    It may be ancient folk-lore, but I noticed on a long Thames-side walk last thursday that bushes and trees are carrying unusually large crops of berries and fruits, said to be a harbinger of a cold winter. Some trees are already shedding leaves, about a month early by my reckoning. Must be signs of another “warm-cold” winter, of the type that our Met Office apparently knew was coming as a result of “climate change”, but forgot to tell us. Thank goodness – I thought I’d never live to see another snowflake. They’ve also just been telling us that it’s “very difficult” predicting the weather here in the UK – they seem to think we need to know that, in a country where the only topics of conversation are football, the weather, and how the latter affects the former.

    PS – if you want to irritate the hell out of a Met Office forecaster, just whisper “barbecue summer” to him. They didn’t tell us we’d need the barbecues to keep ourselves warm that summer. I also like to pull the wings off flies (not that there have been many about, this has been another wet and dismal “barbecue summer”.)

    1. Viv Evans

      Same here in South Wales. Tree leaves are turning already as well, something which usually starts around the middle of October.
      The storm and rain yesterday felt autumnal, not like late summer at all.
      Holly berries are ripe, as are hawthorn berries – all about four weeks early.
      Squirrels are eating all ripe blackberries they can find, and are coming close to back doors to look for food.
      Garden birds which usually stay in the countryside until October have started to come back already.

      I trust those signs more than the Met Office forecasts (if they come up with any!), that’s for sure.

  9. Edward

    @ MostlyHarmless,
    Anecdotal but yes the Autumnal fall is coming early, the berries and conkers are too, I think that it will pressage a hard winter.

    @R de Haan, yes I am worried about Katla growling, it sends shivers down my spine, my God how bad could it really get? – the LIA, had low solar activity, and high to very high volcanic activity – it doesn’t bear thinking about.

    @ matti, yes, PDO in extended cooling phase like in 1940 – 70s?

    Looking cool PG?!

  10. Edward

    BTW, was that Yvonne in the pic?

    Nice camouflage!

  11. mwhite

    ‘the 7 lean years will end on 31 December 2015′.

    With the AMO due to go negative from the middle to the end of this decade. Can the above statement be relied upon?

    Also according to Piers Corbyn a negative sunspot cycle brings the lean years?

  12. R. de Haan

    Strong harmonic tremor Katla
    “The Public Civil Emergency Authority (Almannavarnir) in Iceland has increased monitoring with Katla volcano”.
    http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=1436

    @Edward
    There is a rather strong statistical correlation between solar minimum conditions and the increase in frequency and strength of seismic and volcanic events.

  13. matti

    mwhite
    You asked
    “With the AMO due to go negative from the middle to the end of this decade. Can the above statement be relied upon?”

    AMO cycle is less predictable than PDO and its cycle is quite variable . I don’t know if anyone knows for sure when it will go negative again although it’s positive value has been declining since about 2005 . North Atlantic is cooling and its heat content is declining faster than most oceans the last time I looked at it

    Wikipedia correctly summarized one study that looked at this problem statistically. They said
    Enfield and Cid–Serrano as an illustration of an approach as described in their paper called “The Probabilistic Projection of Climate Risk”.[7] Their histogram of zero crossing intervals from a set of five re-sampled and smoothed version of Gray et al (2004) index together with the Maximum Likelihood Estimate gamma distribution fit to the histogram, showed that the largest frequency of regime interval was around 10–20 year. The cumulative probability for all intervals 20 years or less was about 70% [8]

    AMO went positive in 1994 so 20 years will be about 2014-2015

  14. matti

    The attached paper illustrates the problem of predicting AMO cycles.

    http://www.usclivar.org/Newsletter/Variations_V3N3/Enfield.pdf

  15. mindert eiting

    Thanks a lot Pierre for the photograph of the frozen cow. I will send it to a friend who still hopes that the Netherlands will become a tropical paradise. Actually, she hates it that AGW is not true.

    1. Edward

      You make a very interesting point, one which imo, highlights the effectiveness of the alarmist propaganda campaign and in doing so, underscores the enormity of the AGW lie.

      AGW alarmist propaganda, in its scale and fantastic Hollywood style imagery has left a mark on [some] people who are unable, or cannot be bothered to engage their ‘little grey cells’ and think through, the actualities of the fiction that WAS CAGW.
      Alarmists, wanted immediate results, they wanted to shock the populations of western nations, they lied through their teeth and it [obviously] worked in some cases.
      In order for their scurrilous message to ‘get across’, the time scale of these supposed changes to our weather – say in Europe had to be ‘fast forwarded’, like a recorded film, the fast forward button has been depressed, thus, nature is speeded up and in 10 or 20 years [in some people’s minds’ eye] the tropics will come to Holland – gee!

      Well the s**t has hit the fan, the weather is the weather and it ain’t gonna change quickly for any man………………… in actual fact it is doing the opposite of what warmists are STILL predicting – making their projections even more idiotic! [the wonders of IPCC cyber world.]

      Unfortunately for some, Europeans were hoping to see [in their lifetimes??] wildebeest on the polders and birds of paradise in the Ardennes will be greatly disappointed.

      1. DirkH

        “AGW alarmist propaganda, in its scale and fantastic Hollywood style imagery has left a mark on [some] people”

        Yesterday in the news, every 3rd European is mad.
        http://www.aerztezeitung.de/news/article/668689/jeder-dritte-europaeer-ernste-psychische-probleme.html

        1. Edward

          Yes Dirk, very worrying, I am of the firm opinion, that when the thinking is done for you, when the striving and fighting for yourself and your family and the breadwinning battle is taken away, ie, made unnecessary – this is the result.

          On another point Dirk, one to which you allude to, indeed there are many people in the EU who will just about believe anything, or everything placed before their eyes.

          Bread and circuses, keep them amused, keep them docile, keep them ‘in the dark’ and tell them lies, more lies and always maintain the lie.

          1. DirkH

            One could say that AGW and the associated political movements are exploiting the mentally deranged. Such movements are a constant in human history; remember Jonestown, witch burning, pogroms.

        2. Ulrich Elkmann

          “Every 3rd European is mad” – says who? Therapists, or their lobbies, exactly those who stand to profit from the diagnosis of any deviation from an arbitrary norm…
          http://zettelsraum.blogspot.com/2011/09/zitat-des-tages-wir-psychisch-kranken.html
          Something is amiss, immediate help is needed, the experts are the only ones who know anything about it, and a whole therapeutic industry must be paid generously. If you treat the individual, it’s psychotherapy; if you heal Mother Earth, it’s AGW.

          1. mindert eiting

            I agree. The study may be something for Numberwatch. Today, many school-children are diagnosed ADHD, etc., often by their teachers. Next, they are treated with Ritalin, which is more expensive than the codliver oil I had to swallow in my youth.

          2. Edward

            Cod liver oil is good stuff – for arthritis and skin!….So is the solar influence too in good measure.

  16. R. de Haan

    I still think many Europeans could be crazy but they are not stupid.

    Our political elite only decide for us because we let them.

    Opinion polls show the majority of the people no longer think AGW is a problem and a majority is against bail outs and shifting power to the EU.

    This all despite the propaganda, bread and circuses.

    1. DirkH

      That’s the other two thirds.

  17. DirkH

    “The dark side of solar energy”
    German article about appalling pay at German PV makers.

    http://www.morgenpost.de/wirtschaft/article1753055/Die-Schattenseite-der-Solarstrom-Branche.html

    1,000 EUR for full time employment before taxes; 7.30 EUR per hour before taxes for temps.

    1. R. de Haan

      Yep, real “green” slave jobs.

      And even with these low paying jobs they can’t compete.

  18. DirkH
    1. Edward

      A whole new category for the likes of Herr Schroeder – Dirk?

  19. R. de Haan
  20. Sandra

    The latest scientific prediction for eastern reveals some interesting things, though it might be a chance for rainy weather around 50 percent: http://www.reisecharts.de/2012/03/23/wetter-ostern-2012-wettervorhersage/ On the other hand, Great Britain and Ireland might surprisingly have a sunny vacation time, due to a long lasting anticyclone.

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