Winter 1962/63 in Europe

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Winter 1962/63
Temperature anomaly 12/1962 - 2/1963, based on the mean value 1949–1978
Temperature anomaly 12/1962 - 2/1963, based on the mean value 1949–1978
classification Cold spell
Data
1. Cold snap Mid-November 1962
End of permafrost 5th / 8th March
Cold sum 1000 ° ( Fichtelbergbahn , 1.11.-3.31. )
Annuality (total) 100–250 (Scherhag, 1963)
consequences
affected areas all of Europe , especially north-west central Europe

The winter of 1962 to 1963 was one of the severest winters of the 20th century for all of Europe . In Germany it was the harshest winter of the 20th century. What is remarkable for Central and Western Europe is its unusually long frost duration, which is in the range of a 250-year event .

Climatology and Synopsis

Pack ice of the Baltic Sea at Cape Arkona , Ruegen, February 1963

The winter of 1962/63, with the three severe war winters from 1939/40 to 1941/42 and the post- war winter of 1946/47, was part of a climatological cooling phase that lasted from the late 1930s to the late 1960s, and an interruption in the otherwise relatively continuous Rise from the pessimum of the Little Ice Age of the 18th and 19th centuries. Century to the modern optimum / climate change of the late 20th century.

Winter began with snow in mid-November 1962 and a polar advance of cold air in the third third of the month. Early in winter, a strong Greenland high and a high pressure bridge to the Azores high formed; this action situation determined the weather all winter. The first cold spell lasted until December 9th, a second period began with snowfall in Western Europe in mid-December and a drop in temperature on 22/23. December 1962, until New Year's Eve. This was followed by a long period of good weather and frost from January to the end of February. A brief relaxation brought a warm phase from February 20 to 23, 1963 with a further two-week period of frost. Only an Atlantic thaw around March 5th to 8th ended the three-month frost period in Central Europe.

The winter showed negative deviations from normal winter in all of Europe, with two centers of −6 ° C for central Germany and the Gdansk - Kaliningrad area on the Baltic Sea , and −4 ° C from southern Sweden to the entire Alpine region .

At the same time, there was also an abnormal winter cold in North America and central East Asia (Japan, Chinese coast), while the Middle East, Siberia and Alaska experienced an exceptionally mild winter.

Estimation of the annuality

In Central Europe , the winter was significantly more severe than the war winter or the cold spell of 1956 , the winter of 1995/1996 was significantly longer (end of frost in the first / second week of April). In the Alpine region there was also exceptionally little snow, where the catastrophic winter avalanche 1951 or the avalanche winter 1999 ( Galtür February 23) in the 20th century are outstanding. What is outstanding, however, is that in some areas there were up to 120 days of ice in a row, even at low altitudes . This winter is considered to be the greatest cold period since 1739/40 .

In Western Europe, even if the frost was not continuous, a real winter of the century also took place; it is comparable to that of 1879/80 or even 1829/30 . In the British Isles , where the winter is called The Great Freeze of '63 or The Long Winter , it was the third coldest since the beginning of the Central England Temperature series  (CET, from 1659); the winter of 1683/84 was significantly colder Winter 1946/47 more snowy, but less cold.

Since then, winter has only been exceeded in cold weather in individual areas, such as the one in the Mediterranean region in 1965 , or the low temperatures of the cold spell in January 1985 .

Effects and local weather events

Central Europe

Ice landing in the Lindau harbor basin, February 9, 1963

In large parts of Central Europe, the winter was too cold and, in particular, too dry, but the closed snow cover of early winter lasted into March. Severe frosts prevailed in Eastern Europe, down to −40 ° C in Poland, for example. The cold sum , the accumulated negative daily mean temperatures, November 1–31. March, a measure of the severity of a winter, was 400 ° on the German Baltic Sea coast, in Potsdam: 560 °, in the Brocken region 900 ° and on the Fichtelberg 1000 ° (normal value for the GDR at that time : 150 °). The number of frost days was 120–170%, that of ice days 200–300% above normal (also area of ​​the GDR).

The Baltic Sea was completely frozen. On the Rhine near Kaub , a closed ice cover formed - for the last time so far. Since even icebreakers could no longer penetrate them, the ice was finally removed by blasting. In Würzburg , the Main froze over completely at the end of December , as did Lake Zurich and Lake Constance (and other Alpine lakes, see Seegfrörni ).

Temperatures in Würzburg in 1963

Western Europe

Lots of snow in Overtown , Lancashire

In the French Alps, enormous amounts of snow had already fallen in mid-December and snowed in numerous winter vacationers. In England, a snowstorm on December 29-30 brought up to half a meter of snow and enormous snow drifts, which also spread to France. Temperatures as low as −16 ° C were recorded in England in January, with freezing fog as the main problem. In France, temperatures dropped below −26 ° C ( Amberieu , Vichy , January 23)

The IJsselmeer froze too, and icebergs swam on the Dutch Wadden Sea . The canals and rivers from the Netherlands to northeast France were also completely frozen, and some rivers such as the Seine and the Rhone. Parts of the Baltic Sea froze over. You could go for a walk on the Rhine between Cologne and Emmerich. At the Loreley, the narrowest part of the Middle Rhine Valley, the icebreakers couldn't get through; ice was blown there. From January to March 1963 the whole of Lake Constance was frozen over, for the first time since 1830 (a very rare occurrence because Lake Constance is very deep). Ice thicknesses of up to 60 cm were measured. (See also Seegfrörnen of Lake Constance ) The Walchensee was also completely frozen over.

In East Germany (then GDR), lignite mining was difficult or even impossible because of the frozen soil . In Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig store 100,000 index cards of Curt Weikinn ; The winter of 1962/63 is documented on some of these maps.

The Eleven Cities Tour took place on January 18, 1963 , the most important natural ice long-distance race in speed skating (it could only take place 15 times from 1909 to 1997).

Many wild animals starved or froze to death. The decimation of many populations and the development of the population afterwards were also the subject of evolutionary research .

Victims and damage

Little data is available on macroeconomic and insurance claims over the first half of the 20th century. The handicap in traffic and the economy as a whole must have been enormous, but in view of the meteorological and economic situation of the previous decades, it was not an exceptional event. Major frost damage to roadways is known.

Estimation of mortality (apart from direct frostbite victims) is also not very reliable. For Hamburg, the number of deaths in February 1963 was determined to be 46% higher than the (normal) February 1961, and in the Ruhr area for February 6, 152% higher than in the previous year.

European agriculture was not as badly affected as when the cold snap in 1956 because the fields were covered with snow when the frost began. However, the phenology of spring was 14 days behind normal, which had an impact on the Europe-wide fruit harvest, but no disadvantages have been proven for summer. As amazing is noted that the Shatt layers of the fruit ripened in Southern Germany / Switzerland before the Sun documents, probably because the sunny side, the soil in the long period of fine weather in January / February ausaperten and late frosts penetrated much deeper.

See also

  • Cold sum - a measure of the severity of a winter

literature

  • Wolfdietrich Eichler : The harsh winter 1962/1963 and its complex biological effects in Central Europe. Received: May 15, 1970. In: Negotiations of the Zoological-Botanical Society in Vienna. 1971, pp. 53-84 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).
  • Friedrich Lauscher: The weather of the severe winter 1962/63 in Austria. In: Jahrb. Öst. Workforce Wildlife research. 1962/63, pp. 5-10.
  • Richard Scherhag: The biggest cold spell in 223 years. In: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau. 16, Stuttgart, 1963, pp. 169-174.
  • R. Weise: Vegetation and weather conditions in 1963 in the Würzburg area. In: Dep. Naturw. In front. Wurzburg. 5 / G, Würzburg 1965, pp. 195-204.

Web links

Commons : Winter 1962/63 in Europe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b after reference Scherhag 1963.
  2. ↑ In terms of glacier science, this phase is evident in the maximum number of advances in the Alps in the 1980s. Reinhard Böhm: history of temperature. In: Historicum , Spring 1993, pp. 15–24. Quoted in Karl Schableger: Statistical analysis of climatological time series . In: Historical Social Research , Vol. 21, No. 3, 1996, p. 10 (Article: p. 4–33; pdf, uni-koeln.de ( Memento from January 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), there p. 7)
  3. ↑ Detailed winter analysis 1962/63 . Written by Sandro on October 3rd, 2002 (from September 25th, 2002), In: Wetterzentrale Forum
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Hiver 1962-63: persistance de grands froids pendant trois mois . alertes-meteo.com (French, with daily compilation of weather maps)
  5. ↑ a b Lit. Eichler, p. 55 f (pdf p. 3 f).
  6. ↑ a b c Seegfrörni 1962/1963 ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) , stadt-zuerich.ch
  7. ↑ cf. Fig. 1. Deviations in mean temperature from December 1962 to February 1963 from normal winter in Central Europe. According to a representation in Tägl. Weather forecast d. Meteorolog. Service d. GDR . Leipzig 1963, p. 117. Reproduced in Eichler, p. 55 (pdf p. 3).
  8. ↑ a b c d Les hivers en France: L'hiver le plus long . meteo-paris.com (French)
  9. ↑ De koudste winter van de eeuw. ( Memento from January 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) knmi.nl, January 1, 2009
  10. ↑ The Great Freeze of '63 . Histories of Windsor, The Royal Windsor Web Site, thamesweb.co.uk; see. en: Winter of 1962-1963 in the United Kingdom
  11. ^ The Long Winter 1962-63 . Paperback, The Guardian, cited in The winter of 1963 . paraffinwinter.org.uk
  12. ↑ a b c d Lit. Eichler, p. 57 (pdf p. 5).
  13. ↑ Eichler, p. 56 f (pdf p. 4 f).
  14. ↑ Chronology: That was winter. In: Rhein-Zeitung.de. Retrieved November 15, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Seegfrörne of Lake Constance from 1963
  16. ^ A b Kat Keogh: Sunday Mercury recalls 1963's big freeze in the West Midlands . In: Sunday Mercury. , December 20, 2010
  17. ^ Pathe news reel, January 1963 (Video, 3:18). Retrieved June 3, 2012.
  18. ↑ knmi.nl, January 1, 2009; Anton de Wijk: De winter van 1963 van dag tot dag ( Memento of the original dated August 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . ; see. nl: Winter from 1962-1963  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.everyoneweb.com
  19. ↑ Prussia alone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1963 ( online ).
  20. ↑ When the Rhine was frozen over . Cologne city gazette
  21. ↑ NZZ
  22. ↑ Ice as far as the eye can see .
  23. ↑ Walchensee frozen over: The singing lake in the ice winter of 1963
  24. ↑ Homepage
  25. ↑ The extreme winters of Central Germany. ( Memento from January 21, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Echt - Das Magazin zum Staunen , mdr.de; Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  26. ↑ Wolfdietrich Eichler : The severe winter 1962/1963 and its complex biological effects in Central Europe. Received: May 15, 1970. In: Negotiations of the Zoological-Botanical Society in Vienna. 1971, pp. 53-84 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).
  27. ↑ Lit. Eichler: Chap. 5. Effects on humans p. 79 ff (information p. 81, pdf p. 29).
  28. ↑ a b c Eichler: chap. 4. Effects on the flora, p. 78
  29. ↑ about: H. Roller: Distinctive sections of the phenological course of the year in the area of ​​Linz / Danube. In: Linzer Atlas , 5, Linz 1966. Information in Eichler, p. 77