Climatologist about the weather in May: cooling is expected, which may last for a long time – MadeinVilnius.lt

Vilnius University Department of Hydrology and Climatology Assoc. Gintautas Stankūnavičiaus says that the weather will change in the middle of the month and expect that the temperature will be only about 10 degrees on the days.

“Tomorrow marks the last month of spring, which, by the way, is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful times of the year with fresh greenery, blooming gardens and meadows. This year, spring “hastened” by at least two weeks, and many phenological signs of this are already visible at the end of April. This is, above all, the lush green of the meadows due to the abnormally warm weather and high rainfall, the already green trees, the blossoms of chestnuts and olives starting to burst, etc. It is true that the anomalous heat, which is now being talked about a lot, was concentrated at the beginning of the month: the very first days, then April 7-14 and the last few days. On the contrary, in the second half of the month, the air temperature was much lower than the annual average. However, the warm anomaly at the beginning of the month was stronger (some days as much as 14 °C above normal) than the cold one at the end of the month, so the average temperature for the month is likely to be at least a couple of degrees higher than the perennial one. On a European scale, April was anomalously warm in South-Eastern Europe and unusually cold in Northern and North-Eastern Europe.

As with all sudden and intense warmings in spring in Lithuania, the last one is also associated with air transport of tropical origin from South and Southwest Europe. The latest warming started last Saturday and should “breathe out” before the weekend. The Eastern European anticyclone, whose heat “travels” to Lithuania on its western edge, will begin to weaken starting tomorrow, while the polar anticyclone over the Arctic and Scandinavia will strengthen. Therefore, it will first cool down in Estonia from the Baltic countries, and at the latest (Friday) in Lithuania. But for now, the daytime air temperature will rise to +21 – +25 °C, and at night it will not fall below +8 – +13 °C, precipitation is not expected. Although it will be cooler on Friday and a fresh east wind will blow, the daytime temperature will still rise to +15 – +20 °C, similarly to Saturday, but the nights will already be cooler (+4 – +9 °C), and on Saturday and Sunday nights in places light frosts are possible. From Sunday to the middle of next week, the weather will get even colder and the weather will only warm up to +9 – +14 °C during the day, +1 – +6 °C at night. Frosts are already predicted in many places on the soil surface. In summary, it can be said that this week will still be warm, and the next one will be cool. We can expect more precipitation only in the second half of next week.

The United States has already experienced a series of powerful and devastating tornadoes, with peak frequency typically occurring in mid-May. Most of these meso-tornadoes occur each spring in what is known as Tornado Alley, a stretch of the Great Plains from Texas in the south to South Dakota and Iowa in the north. The main driver of tornado formation is currently very contrasting cold fronts traveling east of the Rockies: Ahead of the cold front is usually a very moist and warm air mass from the Gulf of Mexico, behind it is a cold and dry air mass from Canada and, in addition, a warm and dry from the southwestern United States, which drains after crossing the Cordillera mountain range.

The second half of April was marked by abnormal weather in the southern part of Asia as well: Mediterranean cyclones in the Middle East caused floods, which are especially rare in the east of the Arabian Peninsula, and at that time extremely hot weather occurred in the Indian and Indochina peninsulas, where the maximum daily temperature in places exceeded +45 °C.

Data from long-term weather forecasts show that the abnormal heat in the southern part of the Baltic region will last the longest until the beginning of next week, then a cooling is expected, which may last until the beginning of the last tenth of May. The most precipitation is predicted for the second tenth of May”, writes Assoc. Gintautas Stankūnavičius.