Bears in Slovakia are awakening early from hibernation. So are barmaids in Bavaria, unseasonably busy in outdoor beer gardens.
Bushes are blooming in Austria, and skiers at snowless Bosnian resorts are chilling out in hotel pools.
Forgoing a white Christmas was one thing, but the utter absence of snow for weeks on end has many Europeans pining for what seems — so far, anyway — like The Winter That Wasn’t.
“Hope springs eternal,” Austria’s Kleine Zeitung newspaper headlined on Tuesday over a photo of a lone snowflake.
The country’s alpine ski slopes have plenty of white stuff, but Vienna and much of eastern Austria haven’t had more than a dusting since early December.
Although temperatures have been dropping to near-freezing overnight, warm air pumped up from the Azores has produced a string of sunny, balmy days in the 10 to 12 degrees Celsius range across much of the continent.
Belgium had its warmest January 10 on record on Monday, when the mercury peaked at 14 degrees Celsius in Brussels, breaking the previous mark of 12,2 degrees Celsius set in 1993. Scores of people took to their terraces to soak up the sun, and others strolled along North Sea beaches.
It was even warmer — a touch less than 16 degrees Celsius — in the southern Czech city of Ceske Budejovice on Saturday, the balmiest January 8 recorded in 230 years.
Bad news for bears
But while the springlike weather was fine for humans, it was bad for brown bears in parts of the Czech Republic and neighbouring Slovakia, some of which awoke from hibernation as grumpy as anyone roused early from a deep sleep.
Naturalists warned that the testy animals are unlikely to fall back asleep and could be dangerous to people later in the season.
Birds also seem to have been tricked into thinking spring has sprung.
One species that usually doesn’t start singing until late February already is heard in the eastern Beskydy Mountains, and flamingos at a zoo in Jihlava, 120km south-east of Prague, are building nests — something they normally don’t do until April.
The unseasonable warmth made the Czech Republic’s Elbe River seem extra cold to 70 hardy swimmers who took their annual winter plunge last weekend. They said they prefer more frigid air temperatures, which make the river seem more comfortable by comparison.
In normally chilly Norway, meteorologists said the first six days of January were the warmest on record since 1938 in Oslo.
Low heating bills
Even corners of southern Europe where winter is just a state of mind have been affected. Months of mostly dry, sunny weather have brought drought conditions to parts of Portugal, parching farmland and leaving some reservoirs at 15% of capacity, officials warned.
Homeowners farther north are not complaining at the prospect of shelling out less cash for utilities.
“Warm weather means low heating bills, so it’s OK with me,” said housewife Nadia Todorova (36), walking her son to school in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Retailers, too, saw a silver lining.
“It doesn’t bother me that it’s so warm, because people go shopping,” said Crenguta Pruteanu, a clothing-store salesperson in Cluj, in Romania’s Transylvania region.
Unstable mountains
The warmth has created unstable conditions in Romania’s Carpathian mountains and in Austria’s Alps, where authorities raised the avalanche alert to its highest level.
Although most alpine ski centres had plenty of snow, poor conditions prompted World Cup organisers to cancel some events last weekend in southern Germany, where Bavaria’s famed beer gardens opened for scores of thirsty visitors.
Skiers packed Bosnia’s two best-known resorts, Mount Bjelasnica and Mount Jahorina. But with the slopes largely devoid of snow, most took long walks or relaxed in hotel pools and saunas.
“We go skiing once a year, and for us, lack of snow is the worst thing that can happen,” Ignjat Markov, a student from Serbia, said in disgust. “We spent money to come here, and now we’re playing cards.” — Sapa-AP
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