These pictures are absolutely stunning and historic, I think.
Incredible !
that is indeed a lot of snow. I haven’t been aware of what happened in Greece, only in the periphery without really checking any photos.
I am however surprized it doesn’t happen more often. The weather patterns, the geography of Greece and Turkey as well the relative closeness to the Russian Continent this time of the year - makes it favorable for sudden snow attacks.
Cyclogenesis over the Aegean Sea
I remember this has happened before in the past 10-13 years in Greece, including Athens, where even the island of Crete got some snow.
But my memory is fuzzy about the details which year it was. I think it was either the end of February, or beginning of march.
Even Antalya at the south coast of Turkey got snow, and that had not happened in at least 50 years.
Vast Ocean of cold air
peaking in the beginning of March
In February-beginning of March, the northern hemisphere reaches its peak in coldness and geographical expans.
It only needs a little twist to make ice cold air stream down over Greece for example.
Often a strong stream on warm air is pushed to more northern latitudes on the east side (iraq, east Turkey) which forces a counter movement - and as there is plenty of ice cold air available over Russia, it is easy to engange into a Tango - swooping down over Greece.
The relatively warm sea at the same time gives plenty of moist (Black sea, Aegean Sea) being a huge reservoir of energy, potentially creating an “explosive” deepening of cyclones - perfect for larger amount of snow to fall in regions which normally are not associated snowfall.
Italy (mid 2010s)
Sometimes this happens over Italy instead. During the mid 2010s i remember that during mid March the deepest snow depths ever were recorded in Italy’s history. A whopping 12 meter (?) if i recall correctly (in the mountains of middle Italy).
In case it is not the exact depth in number - I do remember that the photos showed snow going all the way covering the first floor (european first floor) windows. Quite remarkable if you consider that it was during a time of 14-16 march !
Sicily
also got it’s share from time to time. I have seen photos which looked like as if the island was of Scandinavian origin, everything white - and the snow cover reached down to the coast, touching Taormina. (Somewhere between 2015-2016 this happened)
For the exact dates, I have to go through my photo archive, which also shares some of the more significant meteorological events in Europe.
www.rbc.ru
, but this year some areas were surprised with a bigger amount of snow than usual.
)
