Warmest Winter Recorded In Russia In 126 Years - 70 Straight Days Hit 0C Or Above - Moscow Times

[hatrack]

EDIT

Freezing cold days were indeed in short supply this winter, which, according to the Federal Meteorological and Environmental Monitoring Service, was the warmest and shortest Russian winter in the last 126 years. "If I had known what had happened to the weather here, I might have thought twice about coming back," Kamenev said. "At least in Australia there isn't so much mud in winter."

Only 28 centimeters of snow fell this year, as compared with the usual 35 to 40 centimeters, and even that meager amount of snow lay on the ground only 50 days, 80 days fewer than the average, said Anatoly Isayev, head of the Moscow State University meteorological observatory.

Higher-than-average temperatures in December and January made this past winter especially warm, with Moscow experiencing days of up to 9 degrees Celsius in December -- something unheard of for a month when the temperature has been closer to minus 6 C for the past century.

This season's first snow fell one day before the new year, although it usually comes in late October, and while typically the city is covered in snow by around Nov. 20, this year it came two months later, on Jan. 24. These and other unprecedented climatic aberrations were part of what meteorologists dubbed a "thermal wave": 70 consecutive days of above-freezing temperatures beginning Nov. 13 and lasting until Jan. 24.

EDIT

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/03/29/003.html

[ben_meyers]

1. "Nothing like this had happened since 1879," Isayev said.

So what was happening in 1879 to cause this? How do we make it relate to today?
That's my problem with reports like this. Maybe I just don't understand.

[subterranean]

2. 1879 was when they started keeping weather records. n/t

[GliderGuider]

3. 1879 was the year they started keeping these sorts of records.

Note that he does not say, "the last time something like this happened..." What he meant was that nothing like this had appeared in their records, which had been kept since 1879.

[ben_meyers]

4. I wish they would spell that out

Like this article.

http://www.thestar.com/article/173105

"This December and January have been the warmest since we started keeping weather records in 1879," says Tatyana Pozdnyakova, a spokesperson for the Moscow Meteorological Bureau.

Critics of global warming point out that last year Russia experienced one of its coldest winters on record. Temperatures plummeted to minus 34C in Moscow on Jan. 20 last year, the lowest recorded since 1927.