In Delémont, a northern Swiss town in the Jura Mountains, the temperature rose yesterday to just over 20 degrees. The heat record also fell at measuring stations in the vicinity. It has never been so warm in January. And that was not the only remarkable fact. Temperatures in Delémont fluctuated more than 16 degrees above the average over the past thirty years, making it feel “like June,” according to the Swiss weather agency MeteoSchweiz. The warm weather is caused by very mild air supplied from the southwest, combined with Föhn. Föhn is a warm dry wind, which under certain conditions arises because air flowing over the mountains is first lifted, cools and condenses into clouds, which may rain out or snow out. Once over the mountains, the air, on the contrary, heats up and dries out due to the descending movement. Elsewhere in Western and Southwestern Europe, records also fell at the turn of the year as a result of those warm southwest winds. And also today it is unusually warm: in Denmark (10 degrees) and the Netherlands (10 degrees), in Belgium (14 degrees), in Germany and France (15 degrees) and on the Spanish mainland (19 degrees).
