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Huge temperature contrast across Europe today – extremely warm morning over northern parts, colder across the southeast

A very impressive temperature picture across Europe since yesterday, in response to an extreme warm advection to the north of the extensive upper-level ridge, dominating much of Europe. Unusually warm temperatures spread across northern Europe, resulting in significant snow melting and flooding threat locally.

The existing pattern with a strong blocking ridge across much of Europe is resulting in tightening pressure gradient against the deep low over the Arctic region, therefore strong westerly zonal flow is present on the nose of the ridge – over Scandinavia. This is resulting in an extreme warm advection into the region with 12-15 °C warmer low-level air mass.


This morning temperature and pressure analysis revealed an impressive temperature contrast across Europe – the northern parts were usually warm, especially over Scandinavia with close to 10 °C in south Norway and Sweden. While further south across east-central Europe and the Balkans, temperatures were much lower and locally below -10 °C. This is the result of a reversed flow over our continent, the cold easterlies over ESE Europe and warm westerlies across north Europe. A large LOW around 975 mbar is placed over northern Europe, while HIGH of around 1040 mbar sits over the Balkans.


The persisting strong westerlies across Scandinavia resulted in excessive rainfall in the mountain range across western Norway with locally close to 100 mm of total rainfall. As well as severe winds, reaching up to around 120 km/h in some of the coastal areas of WSW Norway. It was quite windy across much of Scandinavia, however.


Here are the highest temperatures across Norway yesterday, SW parts of the country experienced 13-14 °C peak temperatures in the afternoon! Not something you’d expect at the end of December.


This unusually warm period is ending soon, as advection of much colder airmass is expected from the Arctic region tomorrow.

See previous discussion:

Weather Calendar 2021


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Weather Calendar 2021