Europe: the continent shows its weather contrasts

The autumn months often see great differences in weather conditions across Europe. The current weather pattern across the continent yields such contrasts.

An area of high pressure is giving pleasant, settled weather across Britain, the Low Countries, Germany and France. The autumn hues are on display in every park and garden.

Southerly winds have produced mild weather conditions, and in parts of Spain is has been unseasonably warm. Thousands of people flocked to the beaches of Spain at the weekend as temperatures reached the low to mid-20s Celsius. On Thursday of last week, temperatures in Seville reached 29C, which is approximately 6C above average for late October.

Further east, the weather has been very different, with decidedly wintry weather affecting the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

A deep frontal depression has brought stormy weather along the Baltic Sea coast, along with heavy rain.

When that rain ran into cold air further east, it turned readily to snow.

Western Russia has seen several days of heavy snowfall and temperatures in Moscow have hovered around freezing since Saturday.

Although the snow has largely died out, further snow showers are likely here in the coming days. Night-time temperatures will fall as low as -7C.

Across Italy, weather conditions are relatively benign, which is good news for those people forced to sleep in their cars and other temporary accommodation following Sunday’s earthquake.

Norica is the nearest town to the epicentre. Here, although daytime temperatures are likely to reach the high teens in bright sunshine, night-time temperatures will drop into single digits.