11 March 2020
Snow on the morning of the 26th of February last! Surprisingly, this was only the very first snow of the entire winter of 2019/2020 in the Netherlands. For that reason I simply had to get out in the morning and film a bit.
If it hadn’t been for the winter weather and the abundance of snow I experienced in Finland during the Winter Cycling Congress in Joensoe, this winter would have felt like a long extended autumn. Even the snow that fell in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the night from the 25th to the 26th of February wasn’t much, just a light dusting, and it was gone by about 9:30 because the temperature was well over freezing point by then. The meteorological winter is over now, in just 10 days the astronomical spring will also start on the 21st of March.
The National Dutch weather service KNMI, located just east of Utrecht in De Bilt, summarised the meteorological winter of 2019/2020 as follows:
“With an average temperature of 6.4° C compared to 3.4° C normally, the winter was exceptionally mild. This winter was the second mildest winter since the measurements started in 1901, after the winter of 2006-2007 with 6.6° C.”
The service further reports that all the extremes this winter were recorded in Limburg. The lowest temperature of this winter was reached in Maastricht at -5.4° C on 21 January. The highest temperature was measured on 16 February in Arcen, where it was 18.3° C.
The number of frost days (days on which the temperature drops below the freezing point, if only for a moment) was just 15, which is considerably lower than the long-time average of 33. There were no ice days in De Bilt this year, that is a day on which the temperature does not get over the freezing point at all. The average for De Bilt is 3 ice days per winter. The only ice day this winter was recorded in Ell, again in Limburg, on 21 January.
