Weather
In-depth weather analyses, climate comparisons, seasonal outlooks and explanations of meteorological phenomena. Expert insights on WFY24.
The Ochre Days: How Saharan Dust and Stable Air Blanket Cyprus's Towns
Several times a year, deep lows over North Africa loft Saharan dust across the eastern Mediterranean and drop it on Cyprus. On a normal dust day PM10 runs around 100 µg/m³, twice the legal limit; in rare severe episodes such as 3 April 2026 it exploded past 1,300 µg/m³ in Nicosia and past 2,000 at a background station. The trapping happens mostly aloft, in the stable Saharan Air Layer, and Cyprus responds with advisories and outdoor-work suspensions rather than lockdowns.
When the Gulf of Riga Freezes: Spring Ice, Drifting Floes and the Floods Inland
The brackish, low-salinity Gulf of Riga freezes from about December to April, and in spring the breaking ice turns dangerous. Wind can pile ice into shore ridges, though the dramatic multi-metre walls are mostly a Polish-coast feature. The better-documented Latvian hazards are drifting ice that carries people out to sea and ice jams in rivers like the Lielupe that drive real spring floods inland.
The Smog Trap: How Winter Inversions Turn Ostrava's Air Toxic
For most of the year Ostrava is just Czech Silesia's industrial capital, but every autumn a temperature inversion seals a lid of cold air over the basin and traps the smoke from steelworks, coal stoves and cross-border sources into a toxic smog. On the worst days fine-particle pollution reaches around three times the EU limit, triggering an official smog alert. The chimneys are the source, but the weather decides.
The Moving Mountain: How Alpine Cloudbursts Unleash Debris Flows on Austria's Valleys
In the high Austrian Alps, steep terrain can force moist, unstable air upward into violent, very localised cloudbursts. The torrents they unleash mobilise debris flows, the Muren, that bury homes, sever road and rail links and cut off whole valleys, as in Carinthia in 2022. Austria spends around 69 million euros a year on torrent control, and research suggests warming is widening the conditions that set these flows off.
Living in the Cold Pocket: Daily Life in Czechia's Frost Hollows
Kvilda and Horska Kvilda, in the frost hollows of the Sumava plateau, are among the coldest inhabited places in Czechia, where a nearby bog once recorded minus 41.6C. Cold air pooling in these basins means frost can strike on a summer night even as the day reaches 20C, the heating season is so long the stove is effectively never put away, and gardening means working around a short, frost-pinched season. It is a severe seasonal winter, not permanent frost, but cold enough to shape every house and garden.
The Gorge Wind: How the Iron Gates Funnel the Danube's Fiercest Weather
Where the Danube squeezes between the Carpathian and Balkan mountains at the Iron Gates, the gorge funnels and accelerates the wind, especially the cold Kosava, into powerful gusts along the river. Contrary to a common claim, this does not create the gorge's fog, which forms from inversions and humidity instead. Together, wind, fog, ice and water levels make navigation here weather-sensitive, squeezing the barge and fishing economy the riverside towns depend on.
Heavy Rain and Storms Sweep Across Czechia: Our 48-Hour Forecast, City by City
Heavy rain and thunderstorms sweep across Czechia over the next 48 hours on a cold front moving west to east. Our high-resolution model shows Prague taking close to 45 mm, Zlín around 40 mm of storm rain, and wind gusts to 70 km/h on the storm line. The full rain forecast for all 13 major Czech cities, with an animated radar map of the front.
Central Europe's Record Heatwave: Why the Sleepless Nights Are the Real Danger
A blocking heat dome has broken records across Central Europe, with Czechia topping 41C for the first time and Hungary setting daily marks near 40.7C. By our grid the Danube basin has run six to seven straight tropical nights, the hottest barely cooling below the high 20s, so heat-retaining concrete apartment blocks never reset. Railways, water mains and even the Paks nuclear plant are straining, and across Europe the heatwave is linked to more than 1,300 excess deaths.
When the Plain Blows Away: Wind Erosion and Dust Storms on the Hungarian Great Plain
On the sandy, drying Hungarian Great Plain, strong winds lift the bare topsoil into dust storms that cut road visibility to almost nothing, as in the deadly 42-vehicle pile-up on the M1 motorway in 2023. The same wind erosion strips away fertile soil for good. The dramatic pile-ups are episodic, but the drying trend behind them is steady.
The Mediterranean Medicane Watch: How Summer's Heat Fuels Autumn's Superstorms
Through June's intense heatwaves the Mediterranean is storing heat earlier and faster than usual, with localised marine-heatwave anomalies up to +5C. That warmth is the potential fuel for medicanes, the basin's rare tropical-like cyclones, which form from autumn into early winter. But a warmer sea raises the risk; it does not guarantee a bad season, because a destructive medicane still needs the right autumn trigger.
The Euro-Furnace: A Heat Dome Is Cooking Paris, London and Madrid This Week
A persistent heat dome is locking hot air over Western and Central Europe this week, peaking around 23-25 June. By our forecast data Paris reaches 41°C, London spikes to 38°C and Madrid holds near 39°C, while Rome and Athens stay hot but far less extreme. The cause is a blocking jet-stream pattern over a record-warm background — not, as some coverage claims, a lingering El Niño.
Europe's Coldest Inversion Hole: The Frost Hollows of Šumava National Park
Frost hollows form where cold dense air pools in shallow basins ringed by higher ground with no way to drain. Šumava's Jezerní slať bog recorded −41.6°C in January 1987 — just short of the Czech national record. Frost is possible here even in July, and the relentless cold has preserved rare glacial-relict plants.
The Madness Wind: How Poland's Halny Gale Disrupts Travel in the Tatras
The halny is the Tatra Mountains' version of the Alpine Föhn — a warm, dry, ferociously gusty wind descending toward Zakopane. Gusts top 200 km/h on Kasprowy Wierch (a record near 270 km/h in 2013) but run 60–100 km/h in the valleys. It melts snow, topples trees, and shuts the cable car and trails. Its famous link to headaches and worse is largely folklore.
The Glaze Ice Phenomenon: Surviving North-East Romania's Freezing Rain
Freezing rain forms when rain falls through a thin layer of below-freezing air and turns to solid glaze ice the instant it touches a cold surface. North-east Romania, exposed to cold continental air, is prone to it, and the ice can paralyse roads, rail and flights. And contrary to assumption, projections suggest freezing rain here is likely to decrease, not increase, as the climate warms.
Lost in the Cloud: The Physics of the Alpine Whiteout and How to Survive It
A whiteout happens when low cloud meets uniform snow and the light becomes so flat that shadows disappear, erasing the eye's sense of horizon, depth and motion. On the Kitzsteinhorn glacier above Kaprun, around 3,000 m up, cloud can engulf the terrain within minutes. The danger is disorientation — and the defence is knowing how to navigate blind.
The Vb Cyclone Track: The Atmospheric Highway That Floods Central Europe
The Vb cyclone track sends a low from the Gulf of Genoa northeast over the Adriatic and around the eastern Alps, dumping extreme rain on Central Europe. Vb storms are rare — a few percent of cyclones — but cause a disproportionate share of the region's worst floods, and regularly paralyse rail travel. Storm Boris (September 2024) was a textbook case.
The Snow-Eater: How the Warm Föhn Wind Is Rewriting Winter Travel in the Austrian Alps
The Föhn is a warm, dry wind that forms when moist air rises over the Alps, drops its rain, and descends warm into the Austrian valleys. It can lift the temperature by up to 14°C in hours — stripping snow from slopes, turning pistes to slush, and generating fierce turbulence at airports like Innsbruck.
The Balkan Rain Shield: Understanding the Sudden Summer Cloudbursts of Central Bulgaria
The Stara Planina works as both a climate wall and a summer storm factory: heated air from the plains builds violent afternoon storms that can strike either flank of the range. In May 2026 more than 70 mm fell on Veliko Tarnovo in 40 minutes. A survival guide for hikers in the Central Balkan and drivers crossing the passes.