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It seems that the Easter holidays will be very warm this year, with temperatures even exceeding twenty degrees in some places. But shouldn’t it be rather cold at the end of March and still snowy in places?
I agree that the temperatures should definitely be an order of magnitude lower. Now over Easter they will be quite a bit higher – about 10 degrees above the long-term average – if we look at it from the point of view of maximum temperatures. So yeah, it’s definitely out of the ordinary.
On the other hand, there have certainly been similarly warm springs here in the past, but temperature records have already been set in the last few days, and I assume that they will also be set during the holidays.
Forecast for Easter
IN Friday it will still be a cold morning, temperatures will drop to five to one degree and there will be ground frosts in places. The sky will be cloudy to partly cloudy and daytime temperatures will range between 16 and 20 degrees. It will be colder in the west and northwest, around 14 degrees.
Saturday will probably be the warmest of the coming weekend. It will be mostly partly cloudy. Temperatures will drop to 11 to seven degrees at night, two degrees lower with less wind. During the day, the thermometer shows 19 to 23 degrees.
IN sunday and Monday there will be more clouds in the sky and occasional thunderstorms may also occur. Sunday morning will be warm, with temperatures between 14 and 10 degrees, dropping to eight degrees with less wind. On Monday, meteorologists expect night temperatures below ten degrees in most areas. On both days, daytime temperatures rise to 22 degrees. But on Monday it will be colder, around 15 degrees, due to the coming precipitation in the west. (Source: ČTK/ČHMÚ)
Can you name what all contributes to this?
Warm air is heading our way from the south at the moment, so this is definitely one of the influences. At the same time, however, the beginning of spring and the end of winter have been warming for us for a long time. And not only that, basically all seasons of the year are getting warmer, due to climate change.
You mentioned that we already know similar warm beginnings of the year from the past, however, for example, February this year really broke records in terms of high temperatures…
February was absolutely extreme, it was beyond anything from the past. March will also have an above-average temperature, it will certainly be one of the warmer ones, and we will see how it turns out at the end of the month, whether it will also be a record or not. So far, average air temperatures are more than three degrees Celsius above normal.
But as part of natural variability, there are warmer and colder beginnings of the year, and it is important to always monitor long-term trends, whether or not the year, season, or month is getting warmer in the long run. It doesn’t make much sense to pay attention to every swing that comes along.
Climatologist Pavel Zahradníček
He currently works at the Global Change Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and is also a member of the Intersucho team.
And from a longer-term perspective, how are we doing now?
Both winters and springs are generally warmer, even though the last two spring seasons were more average or even cooler. Which is the natural variability, but in the long term our temperatures are simply rising there. March was also a warm winter last year.
We had a very warm winter between 2019 and 2020, when we practically went from autumn straight to spring, paradoxically the first snow in some lowlands was only on March 1. So in recent decades we have experienced warmer winters and springs with much greater frequency. Certainly, a warmer winter is simply more common than a cold one. She hasn’t been here for a long time.
At the same time, some climatologists say that spring and autumn weather are gradually disappearing…
I’ve heard that too, but I totally disagree. I stick to the concept of the four seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, winter – we still have all these seasons, except that winter is a little shorter, spring comes earlier and the temperatures in all these seasons are generally higher than what we are used to in the past. So now it seems to us that we are already jumping into summer temperatures in March, but it does not occur to us that summer will be completely different in terms of temperature.
There will always be snow in the mountains, only the season will be shortened
How will the weather develop in the next few days?
If we look at the medium-term forecast until April 12, it should generally cool down to average temperatures of 12, 13 degrees right after Easter. And then it will rise again to above-average temperatures between 17 and 20 degrees. Those fluctuations are quite standard, we alternate between colder and warmer air. In the past, it also regularly came to us from the south, only it was a little colder than it is now, due to climate change.
Easter Monday will be the last day of skiing in the Krkonoše mountains in the Czech Republic. How do you generally evaluate this winter through the eyes of a climatologist? Was it rather weaker compared to the previous ones?
I wouldn’t even say compared to the previous ones, because they were also very weak. But if we compare it with the past, there was significantly less snow this year. On average, only 70% of the winter snow fell, but the precipitation was significantly above average – 60% higher. So the difference between what was in the snow versus the rain was abnormal.
And in the mountains it was even only 62 percent of what is usual, so there was significantly less snow. He fell in several waves, there was an above average amount at that moment, but due to the warm waves, he thawed again very quickly.
The beginning of December was very favorable and it looked like the winter would finally be normal because there was a lot of snow, there were also very low air temperatures, but that ended in the second half of December. So, from a long-term perspective, this winter was not standard, but from the perspective of the last decade or so, unfortunately, it was.
Will the trend of weaker winters continue?
We expect it to continue. There will always be snow in the mountains, but the season there will be on average 20 to 25 days shorter, so it will end earlier and start later than we were used to in the past. The problem with snow will be mainly in lower and middle locations, where if it already falls, it usually melts quickly, but in the future the question will be whether it will fall at all at these altitudes. On the other hand, this will not apply every year and we may be surprised by a pretty hard winter.
What impact will the early onset of warmer weather have on the state of the vegetation? There is currently a lot of discussion about the fact that night frosts pose a risk especially to fruit trees that have blossomed and are now threatened by night frosts.
This year was a record fast in the onset of vegetation, especially when it comes to fruit trees. For example, the apricot blossomed very early, which is a huge risk if cold air attacks come. And we’ve had them here in recent weeks. The fact that some frosts come to us during April, mainly at night and in the morning, happens practically every year. But in the past it didn’t matter because the vegetation wasn’t in bloom, so the lower temperatures didn’t threaten it.
But now minor frosts are enough to damage it, and the yield of apricots has dropped by 40% in the last 10 years. And there is already talk among fruit growers that either they will have to jump in with new, improved varieties that are more resistant, or we will have to stop growing apricots here.
Read last year’s text about the concerns of fruit growers, which remain relevant this year as well
In addition to vegetation frosts, there is also a risk that the vegetation begins to draw water from the soil earlier, which consequently dries out faster, and if there is no average or above-average rainfall period, then we face the risk of drought.
We had the advantage this year in that, even if it didn’t snow, at least it really rained a lot. As a result, the soil was relatively saturated by the beginning of spring, and the groundwater was in very good condition, but if spring started so early, we are already observing the first onset of dry episodes, which can await us in at least the next ten days. It will very much depend on what precipitation occurs in the coming days to weeks.
