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16.1C (Tafjord) at 16:00 CET. This is the hourly reading, the max might be warmer.
Last hour 15.1C there and at Sunndalsøra.
The all-time high for December in Norway is 18.3C (Dec 1th 1998 Sunndalsøra), so it is out of reach.
I am starting to get bored of this temperature inversions in Serres. -4 C at sunrise and 8-10 C at afternoon is really boring. Most of the hours we are around or below freezing and mild just at noon. I want snow with cold. Not just cold and clear skies or fog sometimes. I miss even the rainfalls.
Without snow nor rain, Italy has been dry for 50 days Anomalous Autumn, but it is not a record (yet). It will go on like this at least till the 26th. Also windy days have been rare: smog alarm in the Po Valley
For the majority of Norther Italy, and in particular the North-west, today is the 50th consecutive day without rain nor snow. The last precipitation is dated October the 29th, and following it has been a practically uninterrupted succession of strong high pressure conditions that kept away the perturbations from our regions.
The numbers
But till now this drought is not exceptional yet. In the plains around Turin the sequence of 50 consecutive dry days is only at the 30th position in the last 150 years, but with any day that passes the anomaly becomes more pronounced. At least till the 26th of December any relevant change is forecast. Only if the drought would continue till January -which we can't certainly know now- we would be able to talk about historical record. Nowadays the record is the 91 consecutive dry days in the winter 1999-2000, that went on form December the 28th till March the 27th. We will see...
Record November
Anyway, there are at least two peculiarities that distinguish the ongoing episode: while the dryness on the Alps is more likely to manifest between the middle of winter and the beginning of spring, this time the lack of precipitation started much earlier. So in high mountain there has been a lack of heavy snowing that are common in the Autumn season, and the Alps are completely uncovered even above the altitude of 3000m. This is also a consequence of the warm temperatures of the last few weeks (last November has been the warmest of the last century for the localities above 500m of altitude).
Dry grass instead of the snow
Right now at the 2000m of the lake of Mont-Cenis, in high Susa Valley (*my note: from an hydrologic point of view it is still Susa Valley, but geographically it is in France now*) the colour that prevails is the yellow of the dry grass (instead of the half meter of snow that would be normal for this period). Something similar already happened only a few time in this period of the year, and nearly always in recent years: December 1941, 1972, 2001, 2005 and 2011. The use of artificial snow is expensive, and because of the too high temperatures it can be used only during the night to add snow to the ski runs.
Smog alarm
Moreover the absence of precipitation have been associated with an unusual lack of windy days. In the one hand this is increasing the concentration of dangerous pollutants in the air of all the Po plain, but in the other hand it is limiting the propagation of forest fires - that instead had been destructive in seasons such as 1990, 1999 and 2000. Only few little fires developed in the last few days over the mountains of Piedmont in areas with only few inhabitants, but it is still appropriate to pay attention and to avoid to use any fire outdoor.
At this point there is a link to an article with the data of "legambiente" (an association centered on environmental problems)
It says that several Italian cities have passed the limit for the quantity of PM (particulate matter) in the air too many times during the last year, and in particular in the last months. The worst case is Milan with 86 days above the limit, followed by Turin (73 days), Naples (59) and Rome (49). Those number are referred to the date of publication of the article, which is 12-9-15, so today they are probably higher that these ones.
For the majority of Norther Italy, and in particular the North-west, today is the 50th consecutive day without rain nor snow. The last precipitation is dated October the 29th, and following it has been a practically uninterrupted succession of strong high pressure conditions that kept away the perturbations from our regions.
The numbers
But till now this drought is not exceptional yet. In the plains around Turin the sequence of 50 consecutive dry days is only at the 30th position in the last 150 years, but with any day that passes the anomaly becomes more pronounced. At least till the 26th of December any relevant change is forecast. Only if the drought would continue till January -which we can't certainly know now- we would be able to talk about historical record. Nowadays the record is the 91 consecutive dry days in the winter 1999-2000, that went on form December the 28th till March the 27th. We will see...
Interesting stuff! I'm amazed you had 91 consecutive dry days in 1999/2000 - completely dry?
It's been the opposite story to you in western parts of northern Britain. I have had at least some precipitation on each of the past 55 days (even though I know three of them were dew or fog which got recorded as trace precipitation) with about twice our normal rainfall in that time, and some other places have had it worse than us.
Has been very dry down here in Malta too... I recorded 27.2mm in November & 17.4mm in October, up to today I had recorded just 0.8mm in December & was still having to water the garden, but today we had a thunderstorm which gave me 16.3mm
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