An era not too distant from these days saw snow falling abundantly on the Po Valley around the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, sometimes even earlier.
It was not a matter of sporadic flakes that dissolve on the asphalt as is now customary every year, but of 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 has yet to be 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 for now, we are given to enjoy the cold winter atmospheres.
In the Swedish capital, Stockholm, the snow announcing the arrival of winter was already seen at the beginning of November 2023, and this 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 blanketed in snow during a recent snowfall.
This year we are facing an unusually warm sea, following a summer characterized by persistent high pressures; now we are dealing with storms of such intensity that they can be compared, in their destructive force, to hurricanes, although no one dares to label them as such yet.
It seems that there has been a breakdown in global climate harmony.
In Italy, for example, in the North, seeing the thermometer drop to zero degrees in the plains seems to have become an exceptional event.
Serious frost usually appeared after the middle of the month, and currently, there is no sign heralding its arrival.
A reassuring piece of news is that the Alps this year are already witnessing abundant snowfalls, and there is even the risk of witnessing snowy episodes in the plains.
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 local surveys in various cities and regions already denote record temperatures, never recorded before.
This is a cause for dismay, especially after September also stood out for similar conditions.
We then ask ourselves: will the extraordinary events that are unfolding in many areas of our hemisphere be able to restart atmospheric circulation and bring us a period of temperate weather conditions? It is a significant question and currently without an answer, because weather and climate projections do not represent certainties, but are always estimates subject to variability.
With November coming to an end and December around the corner, it is reasonable to discuss snow: it is natural to expect these white crystals to start falling from the sky, and according to historical averages, we should expect that in December the snow will whiten the plains of Northern Italy.
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