MAIN WEATHER AND CLIMATE TRAITS IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE AS OF APRIL 2026
Air temperature
Exceptionally warm weather that spread across European Russia in the second half of March remained warm at the beginning of April. In the first decade of the month, the decade-averaged temperatures were 2-3 or more degrees higher than normal, moreover, not in the ETR alone, but also in the south of the Urals and of Western Siberia. Meanwhile, even higher anomalies developed in the Far East.
But in the second decade, cold weather came to the central, western and southern ETR regions: in the Krasnodar Territory, Crimea, Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria, where the air temperatures on some days dropped below zero and the decade-averaged temperature anomalies changed to negative. Warmth survived solely in the north and north-west of the ETR, in the Middle and Lower Volga region and in the south of the Urals, where new daily temperature maxima were recorded during the decade. The rest of Russia submerged into colds: for example, the decade-averaged temperatures in Siberia turned out to be 2-7° lower than normal.
Air temperature
With the beginning of March, abnormally warm air came to the ETR and propagated through the north-western, central and southern regions. New daily maxima of air temperature were recorded in Karelia, and in the Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod Regions, with the decade-averaged temperature 2-5° higher than normal. But it was not the case everywhere in the European territory: frosts down to -40° took place in the Russian North, and down to -30°, in the Middle-Volga and Cis-Urals regions, where the decade averaged anomalies in the north of these regions reached -15°. Similar colds were observed in Chukotka, but along the Sea of Okhotsk south of it, the air temperature was above-normal.
Starting from the second decade, abnormally warm air rushed to Russia, rapidly decreasing the area occupied by the abnormal cold and shrinking it to the Middle and Northern Urals as well as to the north of the Western Siberia in the mid-month, and solely to Taimyr with its adjacent regions in the third decade. All the rest of Russia in both its west and east was targeted by abnormal heat currents that persisted until the end of the month.
Daily temperature maxima were recorded in the north-west of the country, in the Volga region and the Cis-Urals, in the Middle and Northern Urals, in Siberia, in the Khabarovsk Territory, in Kolyma and Chukotka, and in Central Russia. New air temperature maxima for March and new record-breaking monthly temperature averages were measured in Yakutia and the Magadan Region, exceeding the normal values by 6-16° in some locations.