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Here in Norway we have learned to depend upon https://yr.no/ which provides both short-term (2+ days) and long-term forecasts:

When the short-term forecast states that it will be 0.5 to 0.8 mm rain (or snow equivalent) between 10:00 and 11:00 tomorrow, and that it will clear up starting at 13:00, this is very likely to be correct. If it isn't exactly right it is usually because the changes happen a little bit before or after the maximum likelihood prediction.

The presentation of the weather data is so good that many people in our neighboring countries have started to use YR instead of their local weather service.

Terje

-20 deg C from October to May.

Oh, really?

What other factual errors does Vlad wish for you to share with us today?

Meanwhile at the North Pole,-19 F. http://www.yr.no/place/North_P...

I tried googling for Karlsruhe record temperatures, and got nothing useful. Got anything?

I guess that is easier in "german" :D
This are only high temperatures, not lows for winter: http://www.wetterdienst.de/Kli... (a random first hit on google), there are plenty of towns with heat records above 40C

No idea how reliable that data is ...

Why do you say Wikipedia is incorrect ...
I did not mean incorrect, but more "not reliable" as it is edited by hobbyists. In this case it might be more problematic that records like above are are collected from more or less "official" measuring points. Which means "anecdotical" data from private points is lost (and measure points are averaged, so the 40.5C in Karlsruhe likely is an average from 36C to 44C ... or whatever, no one really knows except the guys publishing it)

Nor do I understand how you could possibly be getting far warmer temperatures than Minneapolis
Well, central Europe is in summer as well as in some winters dominated by strong long lasting high pressure zones. Long lasting implies we have an "unusual" east wind, from siberia. That brings heat in summer and cold in winter.
The principle is the same as the "arctic/polar vortex" phenomenon. No idea why this word got "fame" last year because of the "normal" cold around the big lakes in the USA/Canada. That vortex exists every year, during the whole year, and one or two additional high pressure zones influence the winter weather quite heavily.

That "vortex" exists all the time, the question is how (or how many) high pressure and low pressure areas are established in deep winter and high summer.

Bottom line you underestimate the effect of high temperature winds coming from Sibera, or even desert storms coming from Africa/Sahara, but the later only have an effect in south Germany, north of the Alps (ofc. they heat up Spain, Italy or Greece quite considerably).

Also you might miss the gulf stream.

Even Countries like the Icelands have a summer high temperature like 30C.

North Scandinavia, Trondheim e.g. see: http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/...

E.g. Trondheim minimum record is like -26C and maximum is like 35C. Even Germany is COLDER in winter, in bad winters.

There are islands around Norway at the coast, that barely get a minus temperature in winter nights, because of the gulf stream having like +10C - +12C temperature around there.

Finally, you underestimate the fact that in summer the days go longer and longer the farer north you go.

It is a difference wether your daytime is 14h (in Minnesota) or 18h or even 22h in Trondheim.

Perhaps in Minnesota the "hot phase" per year is longer, and on average hotter, but it is easy to assume the peaks are the same, well it seems the official peaks are a bit higher than in Germany, and ofc, in Norway bottom line the temperature is lower ...

Sorry, my previous attempt to answer was eaten by my iPad ... it had a few more links which I don't find now on my Mac.

It's not always cold:
http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Oslo/Oslo/Oslo/statistics.html
Sorry if it's in C not F, but in general: 0C is the freezing temp of water, 20 is comfortable, 30 is really hot, -5 is normal cold, -10 is quite cold, and -20 is freeze-your-balls-off-cold. Luckilly, that doesn't happen to often.

Generally the winter weather in the city (which is by the sea, or at least a small fjord) is quite variable. The proximity to water also means that it *may* be humid - and humidity amplifies the feeling of coldness. -20 and dry is really prefferable to -1 when its snowing wet snow (melting on the ground, freezing overnight... Makes it interesting to live in the university student village where most of the exchange students also live...), especially if there is any wind chill...

So yeah, we also do get sticky snow, especially at the ends of the seasons. The frequent temperature cycles also makes for tons of ice. Still, this isn't a problem for trafic lights - I guess it's down to the design. All trafic light lamps have a "baseball cap" sticking out over them, which is rounded and smooth on the top, meaning that wet snow just slips off. Also, there is no need for collimator "blinds" to make it visible in strong sunlight. An finally, there has been a trend for the last ~30 years or so (as in most of Europe) to build roundabouts wherever there is space for one.

yr.no delivers world wide free weather data in xml and grib format. Enjoy :)

The weather in Hell is actuallyquite nice for the time being.
Give it a couple of months, and it'll freeze over (again).

nebolshoi sneg - a little snow. You live there? More details at yr.no, forecasting indeed "a little snow". Or no snow at all during the coldest days. Here in Southern Norway it's been a very cold winter, unusual wind patterns bringing cold, dry air from Russia. Perversely, up north it's been an unusually mild winter so far and it only started snowing for real a week or so ago.

Apparently there was a case reported about a month ago about another light phenomena in the barents sea which was apparently also because of a Russian missile test.

There are some arguments against this: The Norwegian market is small (4.5 million people),

The biggest Norwegian operator (Telenor) has according to wikipedia 143 million subscribers

.

Does Norway have a lot of visitors, a very interesting phone/person ratio, or does Telenor provides service outside the country?

Telenor operates over much of Europe and Asia these days, through subsidiaries and such.

My point was just that enforcing competition is a good thing in the long term, even if the companies involved will complain a lot in the short term. The operators complained a lot when the reforms were implemented, but I don't think they would have been where they are today without being kicked away from their complacent near-monopoly status. Both the companies involved and the consumers (citizens) made a profit from the reforms. IMHO the same would have been true for the banking industry, even if they would have had to hire a lot of cobol programmers to implement bank account portability :P

I forgot to mention the website, it is http://www.telepriser.no./ Oh, and a more accessible site (English, worldwide) is http://www.yr.no/ probably the best weather forecast site on the net.

Or, you could use our Norwegian service, yr.no (also in english) to get the weather for any place in the world.

Yeey, socialism!