Weather, Vervarslinga in Northern Norway | … And there it was gone

The figures show that the last remnants of snow on the measuring plate rained away between 10pm and 11pm on Thursday evening. This early has not been snow-free in Tromsø since 2018.

– We can confirm that today is the first official snow-free day in Tromsø, says on-duty meteorologist Emili Carin Rønning.

This is what our readers guessed on April 18:

Record low snow

The first recorded snowfall at the measuring station was on 7 October, while the greatest snow depth was measured on 20 February with 127 cm. Since then, the amount of snow has shrunk.

It is also likely to be the snowiest winter in Tromsø, after the snow-on-slab measurements were introduced in 1988–1989.

– 273 cm has come in total so far. The snowiest winter before this winter was in 2005–2006 with 282 cm accumulated. The average is 508 cm. 2015–2016 was the last winter where it came under 400 cm accumulated, writes Eirik Samuelsen, meteorologist and weather scientist on his weather blog.

The traditional snow months of March and April have this year only produced a total of 83.8 cm of precipitation, much of which has been rain instead of snow.

Local differences

Although the measuring plate at Vervarslinga is snow-free, it does not mean that all the snow in Tromsø municipality is gone.

– There are of course local differences in melting. We have had to find a standard for how to measure the snow, which is quite difficult. At our station, you don’t tamper with the amount of snow, so we have it as a reference. There is still snow in the corners of our plot too, but not on the measuring plate which is the reference we use, says Rønning.

On 10 May, the snow had disappeared from the measuring plate at Vervarslinga, and thus Tromsø is officially snow-free. Video: Rune Endresen

The meteorologist also does not believe that there will be any snow in the lowlands this weekend.

– A front came in last night with a lot of rain and some snow at high altitude. This weather will also mark the start of the weekend, so there should be good melting conditions for those who still have snow in the garden. The snow line also creeps up as warm air masses come in. As of now, there is little chance of snow and freezing temperatures in the lowlands, says Rønning.