After the European heat wave of last week, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme.
Currently the weather pattern dominating Central Europe is bringing unusually cold air over the continent, and early this morning regions in a number of countries were hit by ground surface frost.
Parts of Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic saw surface frost – even down to the lower elevations (Belgium is hardly a mountainous region).
Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann here writes and supplies a link showing a German video reporting conditions that the German Eifel region woke up to early this morning. At the 1:50 mark the video reports:
We saw fields that were snow-white. That on the tenth of July I have never seen before. My colleague Fabian had also never seen this before. It just looked wonderful. We just thought that indeed we are not in autumn or spring; we are actually in July. These pictures impressed us, and that we found this frost.”
Apparently the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO2 was unable to trap the heat and prevent frost from forming at ground level.
Yesterday Aonach Mor and Strathallan in Scotland saw frost. So did Blackpool and Exeter in England!
Central Europe and Great Britain were not the only places at the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere that saw frosty conditions. ABC News here reports that “Tioga Pass was closed from 4 miles west of Jct 395 to the Yosemite National Park entrance gate, due to snow.”
Also the southern hemisphere has seen cold weather as well. The forecast for Australia is calling for below normal temperatures.