Once, in wintertime Lithuania, children braved mountains of snow to reach school, with temperatures falling to –30C or –40C degrees. Under such weather, even the Baltic Sea would freeze over.
Meteorologist Gytis Valaika says past winters were usually stable: once cold weather set in, it lasted until March, with thaws occurring only once or twice. As a result, the snow cover kept building up.
The thickest snow cover in the entire history of meteorological observations was 94cm, recorded on March 17, 1931, in Laukuva, western Lithuania.
The meteorologist says that nearly a metre of snow accumulated over the whole winter, so people had to dig their way out to leave their homes or feed livestock in barns. In places that were used less often, enormous snowbanks formed.
“They used to say there was so much snow you couldn’t see the fences. [...] If small children were walking back then, essentially the child’s height was the same as the snowbank – the child couldn’t see anything and was walking through a kind of tunnel.
So things like that really could happen, and it’s not made up. Of course, it wasn’t very frequent, but it did occur,” Valaika says.
However, a far more dangerous snow event occurred in modern times, on November 25, 2008. Residents of Nida on the Baltic coast and the surrounding area woke up almost buried under a thick layer of snow.
So much wet snow had drifted that some residents struggled to open their front doors in the morning; traffic was paralysed.
According to data from the Nida meteorological station, as much as 66mm of precipitation fell in 12 hours, and a snow cover up to 45cm thick formed in a short period.
Valaika explains that such snowfall is a local phenomenon, caused in our region by lake-effect snow, which forms when a very cold air mass – for example, a northerly airflow – moves over the relatively warm waters of the Baltic Sea.
“It’s exactly the same as in America near the Great Lakes, where a metre of snow can fall rapidly. [...] Americans call it lake-effect snow,” Valaika says.
What made the snowfall in Nida particularly remarkable was not only the amount of snow in a short time, but also the fact that on the evening of November 24, there was thunder during the snowfall.
“It’s quite a unique phenomenon to have snow and thunder at the same time,” the specialist says.
Blizzards and censorship
According to data from the Lithuanian Hydrometeorological Service, only once, on January 6–7, 1982, an exceptionally severe blizzard raged across a third of Lithuania’s territory, with wind speeds exceeding 20 metres per second.
It lasted longest in Ukmergė, central Lithuania, with around 30 hours and 30 minutes. Temperatures dropped to between –16C and –18C, with snow cover increasing by as much as 30–40cm. It was a catastrophic meteorological event, leaving roads impassable for five to six days.
Valaika also notes that the blizzard claimed lives. However, the exact death toll is unclear, as the Soviet press typically played down such events.
“There was a paramedic, if I’m not mistaken, who was travelling through the blizzard to a woman in labour,” Valaika recalls. “I don’t remember all the details, but apparently the more prominent stories in society could not be silenced even by Soviet censorship.”
In addition, photographing meteorological phenomena was allowed only after the clean-up effort.
“Then journalists were finally allowed to come and describe how brilliantly everyone had coped with the consequences, how quickly everything had been rebuilt, what hardworking people we were, how well we worked and how, together, we could sort everything out,” he says.
Extreme cold and a frozen Baltic Sea
According to meteorological data, extreme cold in Lithuania is recorded when the minimum air temperature drops to –30C or lower. It was last recorded in Lithuania almost 14 years ago.
On February 2–5, 2012, when an exceptionally cold Arctic air mass swept across the country and the region, air temperatures in Panevėžys, Ukmergė, Utena and Varėna fell below –30C.
However, the country’s all-time cold record was –42.9C, recorded in Utena, northeastern Lithuania, on the night of January 31, 1956.
At that time, not only did all lakes and rivers freeze over, but the Baltic Sea froze as far as the Danish coast. Over the past 300 years, complete freezing of the sea has been recorded 20 times.
Today, only residents and visitors of more northerly countries – Estonia and Finland – can still experience a frozen Baltic Sea.
“There, the sea freezes more because it is less salty and there are more islands. Estonians have ice roads,” Valaika says.
There is an 80km network of ice roads between islands, with the longest stretching 25km between the mainland and the island of Hiiumaa.
“The Finns have something similar too,” the meteorologist says.
Although the complete freezing of the sea is extremely rare, Valaika says the part of the sea would be covered by ice quiet often, especially in the coastal areas.
The last time this was recorded in Lithuania was in the winter of 2010–2011. According to satellite data, several kilometres of ice formed along the coast, and water could not be seen from the shore.
“We haven’t had a truly cold winter for 15 years. The Baltic Sea is essentially a very good indicator. And now the coast often complains that they have neither snow nor cold. But if the Baltic Sea starts freezing and you can’t see water from the shore, then it’s really cold,” the meteorologist says.
And while severe blizzards and cold are becoming rarer, storms and other extreme phenomena are increasing globally – also in Lithuania.
“The trend towards greater extremity and intensity is certainly there,” Valaika says.
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