Weather of the Past: 'A February with Little Snow' 1949

Turns out that out-of-season patterns were once 'normal'

Reference is made to an attempt earlier this year to label whatever weather phenomenon as prima facie evidence of ‘the Climate Crisis™’:

'Winter Heat' is Upon Us, According to Legacy Media, Citing 'Experts™'

Further relevant, and related, content is linked in the above piece.

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Wiener Zeitung, 4 March 1949: ‘A Snow-less February’

For today’s piece, we turn to the venerable Wiener Zeitung, which, until its ‘restructuring’ last year, was among the oldest continuously-publishing daily newspapers (it began operations as the Wienerisches Diarium in 1703). Tribute (h/t) is paid to A. Goldberg on Twitter who first posted it (as far as I know).

You see, back on 4 March 1949, it brought the below piece (on p. 4, orig. scan), the below translation is by me, with emphases added:

A February with Little Snow

By Leopold Kletter, Ph.D. Wiener Zeitung, 4 March 1949, p. 4 [source]

The month of February began with bitter cold. With northern air supply, temperatures in Austria dropped to the lowest values of what was actually a very mild winter. The coldest day was 4 Feb.. Lunz am See reported a new low temperature record at -27 degrees [Celsius]. On the same day, Tamsweg had -24 degrees, Zell am See -22 degrees, but Innsbruck also reported a minimum temperature of -20 degrees. After this winter low, temperatures recovered within a few days and soon reached normal values.

Most of the month was dominated by high-pressure weather conditions over Central Europe, under the influence of which the weather often took on spring-like character. During the day the temperatures rose to almost 10 degrees. The warmest day of the month was 22 Feb., when temperatures often exceeded ten degrees in the lowlands. It was warmest in the east and south that day. The maximum daily temperature in Eisenstadt and Lienz reached 16 degrees. Then Vienna followed. Retz and Klagenfurt with 15 degrees. But all other weather stations in Austria also reported temperatures around 15 degrees. The nights of this high pressure period in February, on the other hand, were often quite cool, and night frost was not uncommon.

What stood out in February was the extreme dryness of this month, a direct result of the persistent high-pressure weather conditions in Central Europa. In East Tyrol and in several places in Carinthia and Styria, such as Villach and Graz, there was no precipitation at all during the entire month. The minimum amount of 4 mm fell in the Murtal, only 5 mm in the Weinviertel, and 9 mm in Vienna. February was also characterised by exceptional dryness in the other Austrian states. The last similarly dry February was in 1927. Since the turn of the century there have been only five February months with similar drought conditions [orig. Trockenheit].

Another consequence of the high-pressure weather situation and the associated extraordinarily large rainfall deficit in February was the catastrophically poor snow conditions in the Austrian ski areas. At the beginning of the month the snow depth and snow conditions were still satisfactory. However, since no more fresh snow fell, the weather conditions were persistently dry and temperatures often exceeded zero degrees, a very significant reduction in snow soon occurred. In the second half of the month there was usually no snow at all in the lowlands, and even at higher altitudes the snow depth was often reduced by more than a meter. Not to mention the quality of the snow, which was usually very unfavorable. It was only in the last few days of the month that the weather became more hopeful for skiers. The air supply is now coming from northern Europe again, and the resulting cold spells with snowy weather promise more favourable skiing weather in the mountains in March.

Bottom Lines

Two brief issues to mention: if you think any weather-related event is ‘unique’, has ‘never been observed’, or ‘clearly evidence of “the Climate Crisis™”’, you’re probably wrong.

The evidence before us in the form of ‘old newspapers’, these days readily available in national archives courtesy of large-scale digitisation efforts and collaborations with ‘Big Tech’ (think: Google) permits one to peruse these repositories with great ease.

As an aside, I’m currently working my way through the diary of a monk and later abbot of Zwettl Abbey in Lower Austria who meticulously recorded temperatures from 1807 or thereabouts until 1847. Newspapers aren’t the only such sources. Therein, around 1811 (if memory serves), one reads about comparably ‘extraordinary’ conditions that made local farmers commence the harvest ‘a month earlier than usual’, mainly due to ‘a warm spring and hot summer’. We’re talking the early 19th century here, and I’d bet the farm on the fact that there a more such statements in the diary (haven’t looked at all of it because it’s some 160,000 words long).

What I’m saying is that we’re observing changing patterns—of human behaviour, message control, and induced societal responses.

Unless and until ‘we’ return to observation-based decision-making, grounded on past experiences and adorned with evidence that stands the test of time, we’ll continue the march of folly, driven by ideology masquerading as ‘the Science™’ and an increasing unwillingness to accept the idea of ‘us’ having been ‘wrong’.

As an aside, click here for the spectacle of one academic (Stefan Weber, Ph.D.) pointing out that ‘higher educational qualifications are not an indicator of higher education’—he was severely abused by people on social media.

That ain’t science nor scholarship. It’s ideological blinders applied to empirical evidence.

It’s worst among academics, followed closely by politicians and media people.