Title: Weather going nuts more and more...
Post by FalconFly on 01.07.09 at 20:16:19
...as if it wasn't enough that April has been the hottest April in recorded weather history here in Germany (since 1890), the heat is once again battling the country.
From my experience, I can barely from the 70's and 80's remember seeing such heat on isolated days, sometime in high summer around August/September.
I also remember we used to have freezing temps until March, isolated even snow in early April.
Now the last two winters have basically.... vanished (!?)
2 years ago, I've seen the first time in my life that Nature simply "skipped" Winter, auntum lasted for some 5 months, just to turn into Spring in less than 2 weeks.
This year, I've (again, for the first time in my life) seen an almost non-existing winter jumping right into Summer in less than 3 hours (!!!)
I mean this is unbelievable, just imagine this :
Temps are around a constant 4-6 Degrees Celsius over the last 2 months straight, with tops of max. 10-15 Degrees Celsius on sunny days. Add wind to it, and you're outright freezing - and I live less than 30mi away from the north sea, so there should almost always be some wind.
You look at the thermometer at 07:00 in the morning after waking up, 5 Degrees C as usual, windows have been closed in the bedroom because it tended to be too chilly during nighttime (although I prefer a rather cool temperated night).
You drive to work at 08:15, note it's still 5deg out there and light morning fog - and dress up nice&warm accordingly, even think about putting gloves on (it's gonna be a bicycle ride).
Now get this : half way to work the fog lifts and the sun comes through.
Before 09:00, ambient temperature is exceeding 20 degrees and >30 degrees in the sun. You stopped several times, had to take everything off because you're sweating like crazy.
By noon, it's a hot summer day. Everyone shakes his head in utter disbelief but eventually welcomes the turbo-summer change.
This is driving me nuts, it gets hotter and hotter every year.
Germany used to be known for it's mediocre weather and rather low average temperatures. Vacation sites have for many decades been the warmer, southern regions (Spain, Italy, tropical islands and all such).
Now we're seeing people wander off to the north because it's cooler there and the southern traditional vacation regions either have shitty weather or their own temperatures have reached or exceed insane levels (movement in air conditioned compounds only).
...until some 5 years ago, Tornados in Germany have been nothing but a blank theory; noone never witnessed a single one in the 85Mio population state since the dawn of time.
Now we start having them year after year, on multiple occasions and recorded on tape for the first times in our history.
They're still small and thanks to German-typical building (very robust) relatively little damage is done.
In aviation terms, our thunderstorms one could always overfly, back in '93 I was teached that german weather will hardly ever exceed 25000 ft of altitude. Penetration was always highly discouraged but at anytime possible when unavoidable.
Now we're seeing badass 35000ft+ Class 5 to 6 thunderstorms I wouldn't dare to even approach, last time I remember seeing those was in Texas, Tornado valley.
We've also seen for the first time that the energy production (nuclear reactors almost all situated near large rivers for cooling purposes) had to be severely limited, as the rivers exceeded 35 degres celsius. They throttle down the Megawatts in order no to literally "cook" the rivers and kill everything alive in it. When I was a kid I remember no large river here ever had more than like 20 deg peak, swimming was equaling a painful, freezing experience.
The years of medium, soft weather where you could at anytime go out and play as a kid even during storm days seem absolutely gone. Now it has become too dangerous. 3 weeks ago the way home on the road was interrupted just about every few Minutes, as one had to carry complete tree parts and strong 10 foot branches off the road to advance at all. Needless to say, half town was almost flooded (the sewers luckily were desert-dry when the storm came through, so it had 100% capacity to take most of the water)
Absolutely crazy. And it keeps getting worse and worse - every single year.
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