France (20°C), Benelux (-15°C): 10-days of severe frosts ahead, start already in 5 days!

An upcoming Greenlandic, Arctic, and Siberian blasts above Europe should according to the latest runs of GFS persist above Europe long 10 days and bring the next anomalously cold period and snowfall.

In the next series of articles, we will look gradually at predicted temperatures and snowfall in Continental (Central) Europe, British Islands, France, Iberia, Italy and Balkan, Eastern Europe, Turkey, and Scandinavia.

For France and Benelux, GFS in the last runs has seen a severe coldwave between 13.-22. January 2022 (maybe longer), with only shorter warmer periods for western France or the Netherlands, with minimum temperatures in basins and valleys below 1000 MASL with snow almost every day below -20°C in France and up to -15°C in Ardennes, Belgium (coldwave in the 3rd January decade in Europe isn´t confirmed, yet).

Maximum temperatures again will drop below 0°C, with ice days (all-day frosts) being possible mainly in eastern France and southern Benelux.

In the Alps, Central Massif of Ardennes, higher snow accumulations are possible, with a possible blizzard conditions, western France or parts fo the Netherlands should end without snow according to more pessimistic runs.

Prolonged extremely cold weather should have an effect on health, power outages, or problems in travel, especially in regions, where the next snowy round is forecast.

In metropolitan cities, minimum temperatures will be higher, around -2/-7°C, rarely up to -12°C, bigger cities in basins and valleys however should attack -6/-12°C, rarely -17°C, and villages in mountains -10/-15°C, rarely up to -20°C, maybe in the Alps up to -25°C if the coldest variants will confirm.

Coldwave should be extraordinary by its duration, mainly if will continue in the 3rd January 2022 decade (there are signals for an absolute peak of Winter 2021/2022 in Europe in the 3rd decade of January 2022).

Frosts are forecast to start already in around 5 days, therefore mainly forecast for the second half of the next week appears successful, if coldwave will be really (with higher reliability) very long, we will see soon on outputs of forecast models.

Illustration picture: wetterzentrale.de

Source: wetterzentrale.de

Source: wetterzentrale.de

Expected snowfll. Source: tropicaltidbits.com (6.1. 12Z)