Online news weekly FOCUS reports on the overnight damage from Germany’s record March cold with the headline this morning:
100-year event in March –
Greenland icy air smashes cold records in the East
Cold records were set during the night at many locations in the eastern part of Germany. “The windchill pushed felt-temperatures down to – 30°C.”
Readings of -13°C to – 16°C were recorded at a number of locations at elevations above 1000m. “For the last 10 days of March, this has not happened in decades. Such masses of cold air do not reach Germany even in the dead of winter in some years,” FOCUS writes.
Because some stations in Germany have been keeping weather records for as long as 300 years, e.g. Dresden, Braunschweig and Potsdam, “scientists consider it appropriate to call it an event of the century,” FOCUS reports.
The bitter cold is exacerbated by strong, gusty winds blowing from Russia. With the wind, “temperatures felt like -23°C in parts of of the East on Sunday morning. On the Brocken in Harz the windchill was -33°C.”
Wetterkontur.de provides a list of some of the overnight lows recorded early this morning.
FOCUS quotes Eva Willa of the German Weather Service (DWD) in Potsdam this morning:
For the end of March, Brandenburg has never been so cold since the beginning of temperature measurements.”
“Coldest March in 100 years”
Online Bild newspaper this morning interviewed five experts: Thomas Marschall, Dominik Jung, Dr. Henning Baberg, Lars Lachmann und Thomas Endrula.
Endrula: “We are now experiencing the coldest March in 100 years.”
Not only has the winter been cold and dark, but it has also been a long one. Jung: “It was very long, the first snow arrived at places already at the end of October.”
More here (in English): www.thelocal.de.html
More here (in German): www.merkur-online.de/jill.
This is serious cold. Temperatures this low are dangerous and disruptive, and especially so when folks have gone a number of years without the experience. Simple things, such as opening inside cabinet doors (under a kitchen sink) can prevent water pipes from freezing. Folks turn the heat down and then go on vacation or go to second homes in warmer places. Upon return they find broken pipes and water damage. There will be issues that come to light only later. Some of the quoted temperatures will kill vines back to the ground or even the roots (on grafted vines it makes little difference). Such an event can impact the wine and tourist industries. Animals need special attention also. You will likely be hearing many such stories.
May you stay warm and safe.
The sunshine is helping – but it’s the strong, gusty wind that makes it unbearable. It’s a real killer for the homeless.
Yet another extreme event. Why is the Greenland icy air not staying in Greenland? It’s needed to thicken the ice. It’s anomalously warm there right now, and has been practically all winter.
Weird…
“Anomalously warm” does NOT mean “above zero”.
Get used to the fact that climatists have reasons to never talk about real temperatures but only about anomalies.
It helps with cheating.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/man-made-global-warming-proven-as-fact-giss-admits-to-being-unable-to-accurately-record-temperatures-entirely-incompetent/
Zero Celsius or zero Fahrenheit are no more real than some arbitrary reference point to which anomalies (deviations) refer. It is a non-issue, Dirk, but your link is about Hansen, making temperatures increase more than they do. That’s real but pretty pathetic compared with what’s going on in Europe.
“Zero Celsius or zero Fahrenheit are no more real than some arbitrary reference point to which anomalies (deviations) refer. ”
I beg to differ. Relativism has not yet re-educated water to melt at arbitrary reference points. You must send it to a post-normal re-education camp first.
Neven maintained a high anomaly over Greenland has some effect on the ice. It doesn’t, to any measurable degree, as long as it stays below zero.
Water does not freeze at zero Fahrenheit (it does at 273 Kelvin). From Celsius to Fahrenheit is a linear transformation. No information loss. We are talking about scales with arbitrary origin and unit. The anomaly issue is only formal and distracts from the real issues.
I thought you were dutch so I felt it redundant to mention the Celsius; but you are into playing silly games.
As I said, relativism is not my cup of tea; neither is post normalism.
DirkH, it does make a difference for sea ice thickness whether the air temperature is -20 or -40 °C, also because the temperature difference between air and water determines how much heat is transferred from one to the other.
Ok, that’s an argument. Still I have little problem if there’s less sea ice. It makes it so much easier for whales and seals to breath. Does nobody think of marine mammals?
You all rootin for the vile and brutal Polar Bear?
Too much sea ice is more of a problem for Polar Bears than too little. Same for seals and whales. The level now is just a little less than ideal for northern marine mammals.
I think the reference to “Greenland Icy” refers to temperatures more typical of Greenland, not that Greenland air blew into Germany. (Especially given the NE winds.) Or maybe temperatures on par with current Greenland temps.
Amazing!
It’s just the beginning if Abdusamatow is right!
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_02_21/66568476/
Pierre, maybe you can open this article at welt.de about record temps and sun activity. I can, ´cause I read 20 articles and now they want me to pay to read more.
http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article114728930/Forscher-warnen-vor-dem-eisigen-Schweinezyklus.html
Ike
Ike,
try to remove the cookies from welt.de from your browser!
I did it, and it works fine!
Well, like the rest of the German Media Complex, they suddenly discover that the MWP was 1 deg C warmer than today, that there is a Svensmark, that the sun goes into a grand minimum, and that the IPCC CO2 climatists are NOT the only people with a valid opinion.
The Bilderbergers (who control the European media) have really given up pushing CO2AGW. Probably they have reached their goal of redirecting billions or even trillions of currency units and will push in a different direction next.
I had the same problem yesterday. But today it works – good article by Kulke. Will post on this tomorrow.
*I can not*
Sadly, I read of some 30,000 extra deaths of pensioners in Britain this difficult year. Can anyone give any figures for such enhanced death rates in Germany and the rest of Europe ? Kiev is is serious cold-eather and snow difficulty and it looks like Moscow is getting a 100-year cold front even as I type. At the age of 74 I am lucky to be wintering in Hawaii !
Cold European weather should be no more of a surprise than hot weather somewhere else. So what? It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide levels – see
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/162-roy-spencer-s-misunderstood-misunderstanding-and-the-100-000-000-000-question.html
Ike,
disabling Javascript in your browser might help. Or maybe just clicking on your link here. Or you might paste the title of the article into your search engine. So far, this has worked for me.
There was a discussion about this over at the WELT site when they introduced the 20-free-views paywall some months ago, to the effect that, yes, it’s rather simple to get around it, but it was intended as *a reminder*/*an incentive* for regular readers to take up a subscription. Sounds counterproductive to me, but, well…
Ulli Kulke, btw, has for some time been the only weather man in the MSM to take a decided stand against the AGW traveling roadshow. So far. It’s a little early to be sure, but so far it looks as if 2013-2 will be the moment when a Tipping Point was reached – the collapse of the alarmist narrative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp8ninkiXzc
Winter Kills!
Faster than any summer heat.