Siberian cold chokes spring off

"The rough weather situation is upside down", meteorologist andreas friedrich of the german weather service (DWD) in offenbach said on monday. The wide-area circulation has shifted, the so-called west wind zone has shifted to the south. But it was not the weather situation itself that was unusual, but its long duration.

Easter the weather situation will not change fundamentally, but the opposite is true: "the extreme cold is behind us", said friedrich. The holiday weather will not really be in germany, but a little milder with rain.

For more than four weeks frost and snow have dominated large parts of the continent, cold air from siberia pushes the normal central european spring weather further and further south. "This only happens every 10 to 20 years", said friedrich. But this has nothing to do with climate change and the trend towards global warming: "it’s a freak of nature in the chaotic system of weather."

In germany it hit mainly the northeast, where the cold air arrives first. There, march will likely go down in history in many places as the coldest and snowiest march since records began in 1901, said friedrich. Measured against the long-term march average, it has been 3.6 degrees too cold in mecklenburg-vorpommern so far.

Records were broken in some places, for example in coschen in brandenburg: minus 19 degrees were measured there last sunday night. Never before has it been so cold in brandenburg at the end of march. According to meteorologists, it was particularly cold in the north of germany, because the snow cover intensified the effect.