Snow whitens Tirana after 30 years

At the Dëshmorët e Kombit boulevart in Tirana on February 13, 2021

 Snow has covered all of Albania this weekend, not sparing the lowlands and coastal areas. The capital was no exception to this atmospheric event, where the snowflakes appeared on Saturday afternoon for a few minutes, creating the impression that it would be just a greeting to the people of the capital, but no, the evening brought the snow back to Tirana.

The snow continued during the night until the early hours of Sunday, paving the land by 4 to 10 centimeters, even in the city center. A very rare phenomenon for Tirana after the '90s, although the snow has occasionally visited the capital for a few minutes, or with thin layers of 2-3 centimeters. In the last three decades, Tirana has not had a snow event of several hours and such a visible white layer.

The coastal areas, especially the shores of the Adriatic, were whitened by snowfall accompanied by a strong and very cold northeast wind, mainly on the shores of Velipoja and the beaches of Lezha where the Drini valley has helped to strengthen the wind up to 75 km / h. The snow did not forget the Ionian coast where the first hours of Sunday whitewashed the southern coast although in smaller quantities compared to the northwestern and central areas.

Beyond the surprise and pleasure that the snow caused in the western urban areas, the snowfall deepened by over half a meter of the snow layer in most of the mountainous areas. Specifically, the northeast has recorded up to 50 centimeters of snow while snowfall during this weekend has laid from 30 to 70 centimeters of snow in the southeastern mountainous areas.

Such an atmospheric event is not uncommon for the Albanian mountain climate where snow is a common winter phenomenon but has become rarer over the last two decades. The unusual thing about this event is the very low temperatures that were recorded this weekend where the thermometer dropped up to -14 ° C in rural areas while a few degrees below zero in the remote areas in the northeast of the country.

It is predicted that the thermal values ​​will change slowly until next Thursday, and even until the end of February, the night and morning temperatures for most of the mountainous areas will remain at negative values, maintaining a considerable layer of snow until the comming of the Spring.