It feels like this year's German winter on the coast is moving seamlessly from one storm to the next, with cold, wet fronts sweeping through so regularly that even the most hardened "Nordies" are starting to get the winter blues. Nobody has seen the yellow ball up there for so long that you rub your eyes in amazement when it does happen during minutes of backside weather.
And then this: the, admittedly somewhat nerdy, weather website "Severe Weather EU" reports the formation of the most brutal low-pressure vortex this winter has seen so far. To the west of Iceland, just off Greenland, a vortex is currently forming that is giving weather enthusiasts a rare treat: In the widely used weather app Windy, the scale for the highest wind speeds in knots, numbers and colours is running out, that's how strong the gusts are getting. Anyone who uses the app regularly knows that pink is bad, purple is serious and blue wind fields mean that the cows in East Frisia are blowing off the dyke. This time it's a hysterical, never-before-seen white-yellow colour. One hundred. Thirty-five. Knots. Wind. Waves up to 18 metres. A roar and a cosy creep.
As long as the boat is safe and warm in a hall on land, this is a bearable scenario. However, several members of the editorial team, including myself, are standing outside with tarpaulins around the boat. In fact, the second one this year after the umpteenth storm. The last one rattled with an aggressive frequency in the gusts as it disintegrated into its constituent parts. When the replacement tarpaulin was frantically pulled off the shelf at the outfitter in the calm afterwards, it was one to two degrees. After an hour, the fingers were stiff, the rum in the boat's locker was empty and the pride of ownership was manageable.
Just such a weather monster, the Americans call it a "cyclonic bomb", is forming there. The forecast core pressure of 927 hPa is already slightly biblical; according to the DWD website, the lowest air pressure ever measured in Germany was 955 hPa in Emden in 1983. Hence the cow flight index.
But of course it was over land. And fortunately, as soon as the monster vortex leaves the icy sea near Iceland and hits land in the direction of Scotland, it also subsides somewhat. Fortunately. It also looks as if the low pressure system will fortunately move a little further north this time and Germany will only be brushed by winds of a harmless 33 to 35 knots today and on Wednesday.
So breathe a sigh of relief. But the weather forecasters do have one piece of bad news: the storm is the result of an exceptionally strong "polar vortex" this winter, meaning the low-pressure vortex over the North Pole, which is no longer hit by the sun's rays. This should actually gradually become much weaker in February. But it doesn't. It's big, it's fast and it really blows through the layers of air. According to meteorologists, this is what brought the freezing snowstorm to the US coast last week. And us? Wet and unsettled weather until the end of February, or even into early March if things get really nasty.
So book the Caribbean now. But there was something else? Oh yes, corona. Sigh ...
Andreas Fritsch
Editor Travel
