I think that when the snow begun to fall in the evening of 2 April, dumping down between 10-15 in Stockholm (most in the Southern suburbs and almost nothing north of the city)

I call it a pretty remarkable event.

Very strong winds - wind chill down to -10°C.

And boy did it feel cold in that pesky strong wind. Both when I walked home from work around 02.00, going home though the woods. But also next day around 13.00 - the wind was fierce in the middle of the day. The walkways in the City - where snowy and icy. The city service did nothing - no cleaning, nothing. I thought that was surprising - thinking it was only a suburban phenomena. But no - in the city, in major streets like Götgatan, and especially the side roads... there was nothing done.

Especially the side roads where horrible to walk on (Claus and i walked like slow ducks in ice)

Not unusual with snowfall in April

Now snowfall and lasting snow covers in April are not that unusual. However, I can't remember having seen so much in the beginning of April. Unfortunately I don't have the source data at hand in order to follow up, how often this may have happened in the past. (I am sure it has). I only checked back until April 2010 - without finding any snow depth that matched the 10-15cm even closely (during months of April)

This morning, it snowed again, adding perhaps 1-2 cm at the most.

Ice Day

We even had an "ice day", meaning that the temperatures never went above 0°C. Also that is (I believe) quite remarkable as that does not happen often at all.

Very cold nights - but not record cold

The lowest temperature were down to almost -10°C in the extreme outer suburbs, -8°C in Stockholm-Tullinge, and -4°C in the City of Stockholm.

A few times there have been colder temperatures in the past, like 1 April 1963 when the temperature plunged to a fascinating low -8.1°C in the city itself, and -13°C in Tullinge. (I am sure it happened at other times, before the 60s, too). But it would take too much time and effort for me to dig out such numbers (manually).

April 1966 !

In fact, since 1961, this has only happened once: The period of 11 April to 17 April 1966, where all days stayed BELOW 0°C during the day. The lowest temperature in that period was measured on 17 April with -10.0°C in the City of Stockholm.

Now that must have been extreme... (1966 was an unusual cold winter, mainly in February & April) with at times bizarre cold temperatures (Feb 1966) - even down in Germany, the month before I was born.

Why I remember this ?
"Berliner Morgenpost Newspaper from 1966"

Because a neighbor in Berlin Schöneberg, one day when i was 14-15 years old [1980], gave me many old Berliner Morgenpost newspapers. There, the only thing of my interest where those little weather charts printed on the backside on the last page...

I remember that Feb 1966 appeared to be an extreme cold winter in Europe / Germany. I can still see that particular low pressure area, it's funny drawn cold front: and behind it - a new outbreak of bizarre cold air coming from the north, - plunging down right towards Berlin and Germany as a whole. I thought those daily movements of lines (weather fronts), bows and circles where super interesting. Kind of fascinating. Like a dance of rounded and straight lines.

It was those weather charts, which awakened my interest in meteorology !

1 April 1963

Another remarkable period, albeit earlier - happened in March 1963 starting on 8 March 1963 and ended 2 April 1963. Very cold, in fact. But - in April 1963 all maxima were above 0°C - so, no ice day, and the rest of April 1963 turned out pretty normal, or slightly warmer compared to the 1961-90 climate period.

-34°C in the extreme North of Sweden

Back to the now of April 2024

In the North of Sweden, we did get local all time cold records, down to -34°C. (Sweden's April cold record is -36.5°). So, it was pretty close to record like temperatures up there. Even this morning some stations reported cold temperatures below -30°C. (at the most -33°C)