Dear All,

If you are in Europe: Keep track of the weather forecasts. There is a meteorological pattern building which could lead to a few weeks of extra-cold weather from mid-next week onwards. I am not convinced yet, but the number of different websites mentioning this is increasing.

When I say cold, think, -20, -30C in mid-germany, snow in the mediteranean; "As cold as your area can get"; Normal cold winters as we used to see mid-previous centrury.

As said, nothing certain, and I am not convinced. That being said.. Watching the forecasts and how they change from day to day and source to source. Then this weekend I will decide whether to put a few trees on the ground and move mediteranean species in the shed and put a heating cable in place.

I am happy that I isolated my workshed last weekend, so I can still heat it and work there if winter does turn into "the beast from Russia", as some call it.

Thanks for the information LB. Funny you need to protect mediteranean species in extreamly cold winters only. Up here they dont survive any winter outdoors. And I think they call both of our areas usda zone 7.

Do you have any source to read up on this weather phenomena that may come?

Tropfrog wrote:

Thanks for the information LB. Funny you need to protect mediteranean species in extreamly cold winters only. Up here they dont survive any winter outdoors. And I think they call both of our areas usda zone 7.

USDA is about the minimum expected in the climate, but not so much on the frequency. In winters with sustained north-eastern winds, Germany can get really cold, and even the Netherlands can get sustained deep (-5 to -10) frost periods. Most winters however the coastal influence from western 'warm' winds make that we do not get sustained deep frost (But rather the annoying -1 during the night and 0-5 during the day. In those periods putting the olives in a sheltered spot is enough. But with sustained frost I keep them protected. So we had a few -4c nights, and I moved my olives in the garage. However that will also freeze up if we get real winter. After loosing one olive due to a late deep frost I avoid them getting exposed to real frost, without going overboard.

Tropfrog wrote:

Do you have any source to read up on this weather phenomena that may come?

Most sites are in German. But as said, forecasts vary widely. The german wetter site, wetter.de started about 3 weeks ago with forewarnings for mid december. I ignored them. But over the last week the Dutch national weather research centre KNMI has started to indicate a significant frost period coming up, and more and more weather websites are now discussing the risk of a coldfront from the north-east. This based on a low-pressure system over Russia, and a stong stable high-pressure system over northern UK. The resulting airflow would bring air from polar regions over western Russia deep into Europe. In one news report they mentioned the option of -30 in Berlin.

As said: I am not convinced yet, feel more like "white christmas hopes" than anything else. But.. Sometimes it is good to be prepared. IF we do get a spell like early 2021, I rather have things sorted instead of moving things around when frozen solid. Here, every person needs to make their own choices..

Thanks LB. We allready have had a cold spell of approximately 10 days with low -16. According to all our forecasting services we are expecting mild weather for the season, just a few minus and stable. Maybe the cold front is going south of us and we are more influenced by the uk weather? Or forcast services are simply wrong,that have happened before . If not, this is proboably the first time I am happy for weather comming from UK .

Lets wait and see what is happening going forward. All my trees that needs some degree of protection is protected allready. I am ready no matter what.

Weather projection calculations are done with chaos theory calculations. After the 7th interation calculations things are not so good prodicted, as predictions can go all ways. That is also seen in the printscreen of LB. That said, i don't look at weather predictions after the 7th day, because of the above reason.
Hope LB is right, as i want a nice winter and snow.

Mid next week is less than 7 days. But, yes I agree. Still to early to know for sure. Just strange that nobody up here have mentioned it.

Belgium forecast for the next 2 weeks only talks night frost

Yup. it is still fip-flopping between normal winter and a cold bubble passing through.

If you look at long term predictions, weather will be highly erratic over the next foreseeable future, which means several decades. You can expect wide variation in rainfall, temperatures, and wind. In central US there was just a record destructive tornado, and this kind of thing will be the future.

So, trees may have to agree that they will do without the dormant periods they have been used to for millenia. We may have to water more than we used to, or less.

This is something we will have to get used to. The couple of degrees average warmer won't matter much, but it will drive the variation.

Europe has depended for a very long time on the Gulf Stream for warmth, but cold water coming out of the Arctic melt has started to disrupt that. There is just no way to predict what will happen,