The long dry period is catastrophic for agriculture. Last March was one of the ten driest March months in recorded history. This week, however, the weather will change.
Because the announced rain and snowfall on the last two days of the month will prevent it from becoming the driest March in measurement history. “If you take into account the forecasts for the end of the month, it is – with about 70 percent less precipitation than the average – one of the ten driest months in March since precipitation measurements began in 1858,” says ZAMG climatologist Alexander Orlik. “The exact placement can only be said after evaluating the rainfall at the end of the month.” The detailed balance sheet will therefore not be published by ZAMG until Friday.
However, it wasn’t just March that was too dry, but the past six months. “In the Austria-wide evaluation, the period from September 2021 to March 2022 brought 30 percent less precipitation than the long-term average. That was last 46 years ago, from September 1975 to March 1976,” said Orlik.
On Wednesday the big rain will come, on Thursday it will be heavy throughout Austria according to ZAMG. In addition, it will be significantly colder in the next few days and it will snow far down. The snow line on Thursday will drop to between 800 meters in the north and 150 meters in the south. The showers only become less frequent on Sunday, but it is still a bit colder and windy. The last sunny day of this week was clouded again by Saharan dust, which was brought to Europe by a strong south-west current. Even on Wednesday, this can cause a hazy sky. However, the event is significantly weaker than two weeks ago. Towards the weekend, the large-scale current will turn north and the air masses with Saharan dust will pull away.
The sunny phases in March were mainly due to the constant high-pressure weather. In the Austrian lowlands, with 50 percent more hours of sunshine than the long-term average, it was 3rd in the series of the sunniest March months, behind March in the years 1953 and 1948. In the mountains, it was the sunniest March since measurements began, with an increase of 55 percent hours of sunshine.
New sunshine duration records are emerging for some ZAMG weather stations, including locations with very long series of sunshine measurements. On the Feuerkogel in Upper Austria, the March record from 1943 (229 hours of sunshine) has already been surpassed. In the evaluation including yesterday Monday, the Feuerkogel has 235 hours of sunshine in March 2022. The series of sunshine measurements on the Feuerkogel dates back to 1931. Shortly before the end of the month, Kremsmünster (Upper Austria, measurements since 1884), Sonnblick (S, measurements since 1887) and Patscherkofel (T, measurements since 1935) are only a few hours below the respective records and are likely to exceed them.
The entire winter half-year from October 2021 to March 2022 was also very sunny and brought 21 percent more hours of sunshine than the long-term average. Together with 1942/43, it was the second sunniest winter half-year since measurements began. Only the winter months of 1989/90 were sunnier (plus 29 percent).
Compared to the climate period from 1961 to 1990, which was not yet so strongly influenced by global warming, according to ZAMG, March 2022 was 0.8 degrees above the average in the lowlands (78th place in the series of the warmest March months since measurements began in 1768 ) and on the mountains by 2.0 degrees (32nd place in the series of the warmest months of March since measurements began in 1851). Compared to the past 30 years (climate period 1991 to 2020), March 2022 was 0.5 degrees too cool in the lowlands and 0.7 degrees too mild in the mountains.
However, the temperature conditions in March delayed the development of the vegetation a little. In February, the development was still around two weeks above the long-term average, now at the end of March around a week, for example with the beginning of flowering of forsythia, wood anemone and apricot. The more hesitant the phenological development, the lower the probability of frost damage in April.
Source: Nachrichten
