An era not too distant from these days saw heavy snowfall on the Po Valley around the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, sometimes even earlier.
It was not about sporadic flakes that dissolve on the asphalt as has become customary every year, but about substantial snowfalls, capable of transforming the landscape into a white blanket.
This phenomenon occurred following an autumn that left the trees bare, a condition quite different from the lavish foliage of this year, which in the cities has just begun due to a cold that is still not felt.
Instead, this year’s urban foliage was triggered by the summer drought that devastated the vegetation, that unbearable and oppressive heat that might reappear in the next summer season.
But at the moment, we are given to enjoy the cold winter atmospheres.
In the Swedish capital, Stockholm, the snow announcing the arrival of winter was seen already at the beginning of November 2023, and such an event, as ordinary as it may seem in the Scandinavian context, never ceases to amaze.
We have selected a video that illustrates the Swedish capital draped in snow in a recent precipitation.
This year we are facing an unusually warm sea, following a summer characterized by persistent high pressures; now we are confronted with storms of such intensity that they are comparable, in their destructive force, to hurricanes, even though no one dares yet to label them as such.
It seems that there has been a malfunction in the global climatic harmony.
In Italy, for example, in the North, seeing the thermometer drop to zero degrees on the plain seems to have become an exceptional event.
Serious frost usually appeared after the middle of the month, and currently, there is no sign that heralds its arrival.
A reassuring news is that the Alps this year are already witnessing abundant snowfalls, and there is even the risk of experiencing snowy episodes on the plain.
But the current climate forecasts that allude to normality seem increasingly misleading in the face of a climate that has clearly changed.
October turned out to be a month of unusual heat, and we are waiting for the final national data, but already local measurements in various cities and regions denote record temperatures, never recorded before.
This is a cause for dismay, especially after September had also stood out for similar conditions.
We then ask ourselves: will the extraordinary events, which are shaping up in many areas of our hemisphere, be able to restart the atmospheric circulation and bring us a period of temperate weather conditions? It is a huge question and currently without an answer, because weather and climate projections are not certainties, but are always estimates subject to variability.
With November coming to an end and December at the doorstep, it is legitimate to discuss snow: it is natural to expect these white crystals to start falling from the sky, and according to the historical average, we should expect that in December the snow will whiten the plains of Northern Italy.
Follow our feed
