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From one extreme to the other: Yet another month of record heat in November gives way to -21C this week

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If December’s average temperature in Longyearbyen is minus four degrees Celsius or warmer, the yearly average will be above freezing for the first time in history. But what seemed highly possible a couple of weeks ago now appears highly doubtful with the community plunging into a deep freeze this week.

Temperatures dropped sharply overnight Monday and Tuesday morning, reaching minus 19 degrees Celsius late in the day, according to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The forecast calls for a low of minus 21 degrees by midday Wednesday before gradually rising out of double-digit negative temperatures by the end of the week.

But the long-term forecast through late next week still calls for temperatures well below the minus four degree level needed to put Longyearbyen in the red, so to speak, for the year. Of course, the past year has seen a rather large number of staggeringly unlikely things happen, including the mercury soaring to about nine degrees Celsius in Longyearbyen at the end of last December.

Longyearbyen average temperature in November was minus 0.7 degrees, 9.6 degrees above normal and the 74th consecutive month above-average temperatures. December’s historical monthly average is minus 14.5 degrees.

A total of 58 millimeters of precipitation fell during November, including a record 41.7 millimeters on Nov. 8 that triggered numerous landslides and flooding, and forced more than 250 people to evacuate their residences for up to three days.

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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