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18 DEGREES ‘HOT’! Longyearbyen maybe warmest place in Norway on Saturday…but ask record setting France (46C) or Alaska (32C) if they’d trade with us

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Longyearbyen, shivering in rain and strong winds while mainland Europe baked this week, is joining the summer heat wave with a sudden jolt Saturday afternoon as the temperature is forecast to rise to 18 degrees Celsius for several hours.

That may make Norway’s (and the world’s) northernmost city the warmest in the country, according to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. But it is short of Longyearbyen’s record temperature of 21.3 degrees set on July 16, 1979.

Not to mention weather much of the rest of the world’s wouldn’t literally die for as they suffer sometimes lethal record heat, including 45.5 degrees Celsius in France and the first ever 90-degree Fahrenheit (32C) in Anchorage, Alaska (which forced the town to cancel its Fourth of July fireworks for safety reasons).

Still, Longyearbyen’s heat can feel much warmer than its official level – especially in full sunlight and/or indoors – due to the unceasing build-up resulting from the 24-hour midnight sun (needless to say, air conditioning is not something you’re likely to find here).

Meteorological and climate experts largely attribute the current widespread heat waves, as well as a never-ending incidents of record high and low temperatures and extreme storms, to climate change. Svalbard and the Arctic in general often play a major role, due to a “when it’s warm here it’s cold down there” inversion effect that, among other things, has sunk mainland Europe in record-setting cold spells many times in recent winters. Longyearbyen has now experienced more than 100 straight months of above-average temperatures.

Saturday’s high-temperature period in Longyearbyen will be accompanies by mostly sunny skies and modern wind to about 25 kilometers an hour, according to the meteorological institute. Temperatures are expected to hover around 15 degrees Celsius through Monday, with partly sunny skies and modest winds, before dropping to about five degrees Celsius with cloudy skies and light breezes during the following week.

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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