24. Il pleut! Il neige! Where is Spring?

Il pleut!  It rains.  Il neige!  It snows.  And it is cold.  It is currently raining and 12 degrees.  Where is Spring?

The view from our window today.

Even Paul is cold and sick of having wet feet.

Today is the 19th of May.  Only two weeks of Spring remain.  The 1st of June marks the beginning of Summer in Europe.  

The forecast for Paris for the next 5 days looks like this:

•  Sunday - Low 10. High 16. Rain
•  Monday - Low 12. High 12. Rain
•  Tuesday - Low 11. High 14.
•  Wednesday - Low 8. High 16.  A bit of sun.
•  Thursday - Low 11. High 18. 

Giro d'Italia
19 May 2013

Giro d'Italia organisers have been forced to drop a stage finish at the summit of the famous Col du Galiber due to continuing bad weather. Poor weather has hampered the Giro throughout, with today's mountain stage from Cervere to Bardonecchia being diverted because snow was falling at the finish and the riders were battling heaving rain and fog.











March 2013 has been unusually cold and snowy throughout the Northern Hemisphere
25 March 2013

The past several winter seasons have been unusually cold and snowy across much of Europe into North Africa.  A mid March freeze killed vegetables and citrus in Morocco and also in southern Spain this past week.  Last Thursday night and Friday, a record late winter snowstorm accompanied by near hurricane-force winds trapped thousands of motorists on the busy M1 Highway between Budapest, Hungary and Vienna, Austria.  Snowdrifts piled up to 3 meters (10 feet) as the violent gusts blocked off major roads across Hungary and other snowbound parts of Eastern Europe, including Slovakia.  

Nearly 6,000 cars were stranded on the roads and some 18 trains were stuck Friday between stations in deep snowdrifts.  At least 8,000 people took refuge during the blizzard in heated buildings set up by emergency personnel to take in stranded traveler.  Record cold temperatures for so late in the season occurred across much of Europe late last week.  Snow fell in London, Paris and northern Italy at Florence.  One citrus growing region in southern Spain reported an all-time mid March low temperature of 23F degrees last Friday morning. It was 27F degrees at another station in North Africa.  Even northern India saw snow this week. 

For much of Europe, thanks to unusually chilly late winter/early spring temperatures, March 2013 will go into the record books as the snowiest such period in at least four centuries, since the early 1600s.  

Where Is Spring And Why Is It Still So Cold?

It's because the climate is messed up and this cold spring is just another extreme weather event for Europe and North America.
The year 2012 marked a record for loss of Arctic sea ice, according to The Ecologist website: "The Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream, the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in the Northern Hemisphere. Shifts in the jet stream can have massive effects on the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere. It allows the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south.

"The heavy snowfalls and freezing temperatures which have marked March 2013 across the Northern Hemisphere are in stark contrast to March 2012, when many countries experienced their warmest-ever springs. The hypothesis that wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere would explain both the extremes of heat and cold. And of course, the end result of a shifting jet stream and changing ocean temperatures is something scientists have been saying repeatedly for years: more extreme weather events."
March 2013 has been unusually cold and snowy throughout the Northern Hemisphere 25 March 2013 

Oh dear!