Cold snap likely to abate soon

ABNORMALLY cold weather is continuing in Cyprus with Nicosia claiming its coldest night this winter with 0.2 centigrade registered at the Athalassa weather station on Wednesday.

Tuesday had the lead only a day previously, with 1C.  Temperatures have been as much as six degrees lower than the norm for this time of year, said Marios Theophilou, meteorological officer .

However, the chill is not record-breaking. In Nicosia, the coldest night, at a freezing minus 5.6C dates back to February, 1950.

The weather forecast speaks of possible stormy weather and rain in the next few days but it should clear up, with the temperatures rising by Sunday.

Snow is expected to fall in the mountains over the weekend on higher ground. Rainfall in January was satisfactory, with a 102 per cent, however over all this winter it’s lagging behind with only 60 per cent of the norm having fallen until now.

In addition, summers and winters are growing longer, trickling over the other two seasons. Theophilou said. “We seem to be having more extreme weather, such as hail, storms and the like”, he added. The weather prognostics officer, Haris Zachariades, said it was “very difficult and risky to draw conclusions from trends,” when asked whether winters and summers were likely to become more extreme in the future. “Longer-term weather report is still very uncertain and risky,” Zachariades added.

There are no longer-term weather forecasting facilities in Cyprus so the met office cannot predict the weather beyond a few days. To be able to do so, Cyprus would need to be a member of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The government could then use the organisation’s computing facilities and its information database to make longer-term plans. However, Turkey has been vetoing Cyprus’ membership to ECMWF, among other organisations, a September 2010 report from the Foreign Affairs Ministry reports. This means that Cyprus has only limited access to the centre’s information database and cannot use its medium-term weather forecasting facilities.

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