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New weather RECORD: The Swedish town where winter never arrived

The Local Sweden
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New weather RECORD: The Swedish town where winter never arrived
The town of Växjö, where winter never arrived. File photo: Maria Eklind/Flickr.com"

Spring has arrived in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö – and one town in Sweden went straight from autumn to spring without winter, for the first time in its history.

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Sweden's official definition of spring and autumn is when average daily temperatures stay above freezing for seven consecutive days. If they never drop below this during the normal winter months, it means that 'autumn' lasts until February 15th when the season is formally changed to 'spring'.

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The Local regularly writes about one small village in the far, far south where winter never arrived, but this year much more of southern Sweden than normal went directly from autumn to spring.

In fact, the town of Växjö – almost 200 kilometres north of the southernmost tip of the Nordic country – for the first time since its records began in 1858 did not experience winter at all.

The white areas in this Facebook post by Sweden's weather agency SMHI show the parts of Sweden where winter never arrived this year:

December, January and February were also record wet in Växjö. More than 279 millimetres of rain have so far fallen from December 1st, which already beats the previous record of 263 millimetres in 1995.

More than one decimetre of rain (118.4 millimetres so far) fell in Växjö in February alone.

That's all according to SMHI, which also reports that Stockholm saw spring arrive on February 15th this year, the earliest arrival of spring in the capital since 2001.


Daffodils in Malmö on February 15th. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

Stockholm has been keeping weather records since 1756, and in the year since then spring has arrived as early as February 15th only on 12 occasions, according to SMHI's statistics.

In the university town of Uppsala, you can even ride your bike between spring and winter, said SMHI. Spring is already here in central Uppsala, but at SMHI's weather station at Ärna airstrip around five kilometres from the city centre it is still winter according to the meteorological definition.

Swedish vocabulary

weather – väder

spring – vår

winter – vinter

autumn – höst

summer – sommar

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