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Snowless winter in Russia

MOSCOW: With Russia having the weirdest snowless winter in living memory, Moscow is literally importing tonnes of snow from Eastern Siberia to provide for an international skiing event.

Russia would be normally covered with a thick layer of sparkling snow by the end of November, but this year vast regions of the country, from the St. Petersburg in the West to the Urals in the East and even parts of Western Siberia have not had a flake of snow with just 10 days to go before the New Year.

The lack of snow has jeopardised a World Cup Alpine slalom scheduled in Moscow for January 2. A 55-metre-high ski ramp specially built to host the event needs 4,000 cubic metres of snow. The organisers have taken a desperate decision to bring snow by train from Kemerovo region in Eastern Siberia, 3,500 km to the East from Moscow, which has had heaviest snowfalls in decades. The Siberian snow is being packed into 300-kg bags and sent to Moscow in refrigerated carriages.

This year’s winter began with unusually warm weather, with December 3rd and 4th registering the warmest winter days in 130 years of meteorological observations in Moscow. The abnormally mild weather caused buds to swell and roses to bloom in the midst of winter, while the bears in Moscow’s zoo refused to hibernate. Hares in Russian forests, which had changed their grey fur to white, fell easy prey to predators with the lack of snow.

But the global warming theory suffered a setback as temperatures dipped far below 0 degree Centigrade by mid-December. Northern Siberia on Sunday was gripped by a harsh cold spell with bitter frosts of up to -58 Centigrade hitting most of Yakutia.

The Siberian cold wave headed southwards, reaching as far as Kuwait, where temperatures dropped below zero last week.

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