"The story of the winter that disappeared"

In order to have a normal weather to compare with, 30-year periods are used, and there a change of reference period took place recently.

Since last year, it is now the years 1991–2020 that are the statistical data that is considered "normal Swedish weather".

The previous reference period was 1961–1990, and with the change there was a drastic change for the winter in southern Sweden.

In most of Skåne and in coastal areas along the west and south coasts as well as on Öland and Gotland, it is normal nowadays that there is no winter at all.

This applies to places such as Gothenburg, Helsingborg, Lund, Malmö, Ystad, Simrishamn, Kristianstad, Karlshamn, Karlskrona, Mörbylånga and Visby.

The most common thing there is that there will no longer be five days in a row with a daily average temperature of 0.0 degrees or lower every single day.

Because that is what is required for the meteorological winter to be considered coming.

Move the cut-off date?

Does a new season need to be defined?

This is exactly what I have thought about before.

Then I suggested an winter that automatically replaces the fall on January 1 and then lasts until spring has arrived.

But then comes the next concern.

What do we do with the break date of February 15?

In other words, the date that - so far in any case - applies to when spring may arrive at the earliest.

With the previous reference period 1961–1990, there was no official measuring station in the country that had a normal date for the arrival of spring before 15 February.

Then Falsterbo on the Scanian southwestern tip was first out in the country to get spring on February 16, and also last out to get winter on January 24, and thus quite logically had the shortest normal winter in the country.

Now that it is 1991–2020 that is the guideline, there are, in addition to all places that go directly from autumn to spring, several places in southern Sweden that have statistics spring start before 15 February.

Where you thus have time to get a short winter, but that spring then starts before 15 February.

Is it then right to keep the cut-off date of 15 February?

Should it be postponed to February 1, perhaps, and hope that that date survives the next reference period change, which will come as early as 2031.

Raise the temperature limit for a winter day?

Have heard someone advocate that perhaps one should revise what the daily average temperature is required for it to be winter.

That it is enough to say 2.0 degrees or lower?

"No, no, no… stupid guy" I say then.

The whole idea of ​​a season like winter is that it's snow, cold and ice.

For that, minus degrees are required, at least on average over the day.

Not just as the lowest temperature at night, for 10.0 degrees during the day and 0.1 degrees below zero at night, no one wants to call it winter?

We can also have that in the south well into April and May even.

So no, do not change the temperature limit, then we can just as easily put down everything that is called seasonal definitions, I think.

So should we sonic scrap our Swedish seasonal definitions completely?

And instead talk about the season after which month it is, as is usually done in other countries.

Not possible in our elongated country, I think.

Because that is part of what makes the Swedish weather so wonderful, that it not only changes over the year but also from north to south.