Latest news, weather, high school sports for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

A viewer sent me an email last night entitled “Our Cold Weather.”  I wondered what the subject header meant, since we have been anything but cold this winter.  The email only had a link and as soon as I opened it, I knew immediately what he was referring to.  “Our” cold weather this year is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in Europe. 

Like us, Europe started the winter with mild weather, but it turned around big time during January.  Since the turn-around, much of the continent has been in the grips of a Siberian freeze the likes of which have not been felt for decades.  Image 1 above looks as if it was taken during the harshest winter weather Upper Michigan residents could experience.  Yet, this is view of a sidewalk in Bosnia’s capitol, Sarajevo.  More than three feet of snow has fallen during this time and there’s been little or no melting because of the intense cold. 

I posted a map of Europe (Image 2) to help get some perspective on where the pictures come from.  Many of these places pictured are in southeastern Europe where this sort of weather over an extended period of time is highly unusual.  In Rome, there were was significant snow for the first time in 26 years. 

According to the story in the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the death toll due to the cold and snow in Europe has past the 500 mark.  The link to the story and an extensive photo album is here.