Winter has hit central and eastern Europe with a vengeance, the same region which bore the brunt of last summer’s intense heat and drought and of course experienced a warm autumn. This looks to be one of those great turnaround winters.

Much about a week now, temperatures from east Germany north and east have shivered in minus territory with days and nights growing ever colder.

Yesterday’s maximum and minimum temperatures across the continent.

Cold has been most intense over Scandinavia down into eastern Germany through Poland, Ukraine and of course Russia where temperatures have widely struggled to get much above -8C by day and dropped to between -15 and -25C by night.

This cold is killed with up to 21 perishing in Poland alone.

View of a frozen Warsaw, Poland.

There’s grave concern for Ukrainian war victims who’s houses have been destroyed by conflict.

Eastern Ukraine

Moscow, Russia

Temperatures this morning dipped close to -40C in northern Finland.

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West Next?

Given the notorious back and forth of the models, I’m always a bit nervous calling the  true cold card when your still talking 7-10 days out but this does look promising and I would prepare for some proper winter weather as we go through next week. How cold and for how long is a tough call but a lot will depend on how much snow we can get. That will determine how cold it gets.

GFS 2m temperature anomaly snap shots.

GFS snow forecast through next 10 days

An impressive snow cover and intensity of cold the GFS is printing out for Friday 22.

See this morning’s video for the discussion.

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