From the frozen Venice Canals to snow on the beaches of Greece, January 2017 will join 2006 and 2012 for it’s brutal central and eastern Europe cold. Something this website stated was a possibility back on Nov 1.

Scene from a frozen Vatican.

Deep snow buries Istanbul

Sofia

Moscow

Looks like a summer’s day until you see the snow on this beach in southern Italy

Background

The reason for thinking a major arctic outbreak in Europe was possible, was the rapid Oct-Nov snow growth across Siberia spanning two continents with a continuous blanket of white stretching from Atlantic to Pacific.

This perfect autumn pattern was thanks to an unusually negative AO/NAO thanks to an unusually weak polar vortex and following a record Eurasian snow cover, extreme cold followed thanks to an mid-winter-like near 1070mb Siberian high.

The incredible cold which shivered eastern Siberia in November spread to western Siberia in December despite Europe warming up. When the pattern is right and the source region is fully charged, then you’ve gotta look out and with an omega block developing, eastern Europe was primed for extreme western Siberia cold to push SW into Europe.

Lot’s of global warming talk as the focus in mainstream media has not so much been about the Eurasia cold but more the exceptional Arctic warmth.

Into January and the brutal sub -40C air spanned the entire north of Eurasia above the Arctic Circle from Finland and Pacific Ocean.

Lay a fresh blanket of highly reflective snow cover down ahead of the arctic air and you see minimal modification of the air mass as it dives out of Siberia across Europe.

The January ’17 outbreak is the first of it’s kind since February 2012 when we had a similar Atlantic-Europe upper air pattern with blocking high extending from Atlantic into Western Europe and intense Siberian cold drilling south to the Mediterranean on the rear of a large, deep cyclone which dropped out of Scandinavia.

The sub-980mb storm system brought strong wind heavy snow which brought blizzard conditions across Germany, Poland the Baltics southward into the Balkans and Greece while Italy, Sicily and the Greek Islands picked up an intense NE’erly bora wind which dropped tremendous sea effect snows down the eastern side of Italy.

The Siberia deep freeze first impacted Scandinavia with temperatures north of the arctic circle dipping into the -40s.

Norway and Finnish Lapland both dipped to between -41 and -43C for 2-3 nights.

Archangel, Russia dropped to -41C, their coldest January minimum since 1999.

Moscow Endures Coldest Orthodox Christmas In 120 Years

People in Russia’s capital bundled up as they ventured out into the frozen Moscow streets to attended midnight liturgy. Moscow’s official low on Orthodox Christmas night was -30C while the Moscow region dipped to -32C. This was the coldest in 120 years. though the all-time record of -35C set back some than 130 years ago in 1881 remains.

Those powerful winds blowing out of Russia towards the Med had an added bite to them as they came off a snow covered Balkan Peninsula which helps maximise the ‘sea effect snowfall’ over eastern Italy.

Every so often (last time 2012, before that 2006) you get snow in unusual places such as the beaches of southern Italy, Greece, even Crete as well as Cyprus.

This is not a scene you’d expect to see in Greece but in January 2017, it is!

Snow right down to the beaches of southern Italy.

Abruzzo, central Italy

Persistent days well below -10C and nights between -20 and -30C, rivers soon get clogged up with vast ice sheets.

A frozen Danube in Serbia.

A frozen River Vistula (Wisla) in Krakow, Poland following two consecutive nights at -24C.

Not quite the coldest ever (-41C) but recent nights saw Slovakia dip to -35C.

In Poland, temps got down to -37C.

Naples, Italy Sets New All-Time Record Low

With a minimum of -5.7C recorded on Jan 8th in Naples, Italy. This sets a new benchmark for cold. Records date back to 1929.

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Amazing Greece ‏@Amazing_Greece