Most of southern Norway finally woke up to weather on Wednesday that could only be described as simply gorgeous. Sunshine and clear blue skies brought temperatures of around 25C (76F), with only a light refreshing breeze, but state meteorologists warned residents to get out and enjoy it while they could.
As Norway’s summer holiday month of July got underway, those already on holiday were lucky indeed. The sun shone from Bergen in the west to Hamar in the east, and even the weather in the mountains in between was good. Gone was the rain and even snow that spoiled many weekends in June and surprised visiting tourists who found roads closed and hiking trails blocked by snow.
The warm summer weather was due to last through Saturday, when temperatures may hit 30C in some areas, but on Sunday, a major change is expected. Meteorologists warned that the longer-term weather prospects for July are far from summerlike, and forecasts were the worst for Central- Northern Norway.
“As we see it now, the wave of warm weather we expect during the first several days of July will be blown away by a colder type of weather, and we’ll head back into the kind of period we’ve had earlier,” Geir Kjærnli, a senior consultant at the state Meteorological Institute, told website yr.no.
He noted that “normal average temperatures” logged over a period from 1960 to 1990 may prevail, according to his colleagues at the European weather center in Reading, England: 12.4C in Tromsø, 15C in Trondheim, 15.8C in Bergen and 17C in Oslo.
“That means we can have weather that changes a lot in Southern Norway, while it can unfortunately be quite cold in Northern- and Central Norway,” Kjærnli said. He stressed, though, that long-term forecasts were difficult to make, and there may still be a chance of some more fine summer days later in July.
Asked why both the air and water temperatures were likely to be so cold, he cited the “polar front” that forms a divider between the warm air from sub-tropical areas and the cold air from the Arctic. This summer, the polar front has been lying south of Norway, keeping Scandinavia and parts of Northern Europe unusually cold and rainy.
newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
