weather
Far too mild – January like March
Crocuses bloom on a meadow at the Neustädter Markt in Dresden. photo
© Sebastian Kahnert/dpa
19.5 degrees on New Year’s Day in Freiburg am Oberrhein – it almost felt like summer. Only in the past two weeks has January shown a more typical face.
According to the preliminary balance sheet of the German Weather Service (DWD), January 2023 is one of the months that were too warm. With a Germany-wide average temperature of 3.5 degrees, the month was 4.0 degrees above the value of the internationally valid reference period from 1961 to 1990, as a spokesman for the preliminary evaluation of the approximately 2000 DWD measuring stations said.
This corresponds to the temperature level of a typical March – i.e. the first month of spring. No wonder, then, that January 2023 is among the ten warmest January months since records began in 1881. According to the information, the decisive factors for these values were the spring-like record temperatures on New Year’s Day and the first half of the month, which was sometimes record mild and also rainy.
It only became wintry in the past two weeks with more typical January temperatures and regional snowfall.
Freiburg am Oberrhein reached the peak value on New Year’s Day with 19.5 degrees, while on January 19th the coldest temperature of this January was measured in Meßstetten on the Swabian Jura with minus 16.8 degrees.
More rain, less sun
With around 67 liters of precipitation per square meter, January 2023 had almost ten percent more precipitation than the reference period. The highest daily total in Germany was 71.9 liters per square meter on January 12 in Wipperfürth-Gardeweg in western Sauerland.
The sometimes heavy rainfall in January eased the situation in large parts of Germany after last summer’s drought. Soil moisture looks good up to a depth of one meter, said DWD spokesman Andreas Friedrich. Exceptions are parts of Saxony-Anhalt and northern Thuringia, where the soil is still far too dry. In order for the required level of soil moisture to be achieved there again, it must be too rainy in the next two or three months.
With around 35 hours of sunshine in January, it missed its target of 44 hours by almost 20 percent. It was significantly sunnier on the North Sea and in the mountains – here, in some places, more than 60 hours of sunshine were achieved, according to the DWD.