“Snow Eater” changed the weather in Zakopane

Warm air flows to Poland from southwestern Europe. For this reason, the temperature is unusually high for this time of year. It was almost spring-like.

There will be strong winds in the south of the country on Thursday. A warm southern wind blows from the mountains towards the valleys, which heats and dries the falling air, resulting in a sharp increase in temperature. It is called fen, and in Tatra Mountains he is called halny.

The Institute of Meteorology and Water Management warns against gusts that may reach 80 kilometers per hour.

This phenomenon is clearly visible in Podhale. At 8 a.m Zakopane the temperature was as high as 12.4 degrees Celsius, while in Poronin, six kilometers away, it was about one degree above zero.

– This is what the impact of this wind looks like. It creates very interesting phenomena, but very limited in their area of ​​occurrence – said the presenter of tvnmeteo.pl Tomasz Wasilewski. – In mountains larger than the Tatra Mountains, for example in the Rocky Mountains in the United States, it happens that the temperature difference between neighboring meteorological stations, several kilometers apart, is 20 or more degrees. This is something unbelievable, he added.

It was even colder on Thursday morning in Dębno in the Nowy Targ district, over 30 kilometers from Zakopane, where there was frost. The temperature there was -2 degrees Celsius.

During the day thermometers in the Sudeten foothills and Podbeskidzie may indicate even 14-15 degrees Cbut – as the tvnmeteo.pl presenter pointed out – it is possible that locally, even for a few minutes, the temperature may exceed 15 degrees.

Thanks to the foehn wind, the snow melts quickly, so the landscape in the mountains can change beyond recognition in a very short time. – In the United States, this warm wind is called the snow eater – mentioned Wasilewski.