Góry Świętokrzyskie for a weekend

Spent the last weekend away, yet not far away from Warsaw in Góry Świętokrzyskie, a hilly area closest to Warsaw, which does not deserved be named mountains. Ventured there with almost the same circle of friends, all current or former volunteers in Szlachetna Paczka with whom I took a trip to Sardinia three years ago.

The quite short time spent in a group of seven people reminded me I had got used to travelling on my own or in a couple. Or maybe it just highlighted divergencies between my friends and me (where the six of them are quite similar to one another). Travelling with my girlfriends, optionally also with their friends seems a whole lot easier.

With my friends for a long time I have noticed two major moot points. Firstly - sleeping habits. I am the only early bird in this group, while others prefer to sit up late (which I don't mind, but get up early next morning anyway). Secondly - eating. I am the one who eats to live, not the other way round and do not take delight in dining. Besides, I eat a large breakfast and a proper lunch and then take up little until going to sleep. They in turn all adore tasty food and a dinner is their main meal over the day. I like their company, but each time I am surrounded by them for more than a few hours, I repeat to myself I am not marrying them, hence my frustrations are useless.

Now a few snaps from the trip. On Saturday we climbed a short trail to Święty Krzyż church. Had I travelled on my own, I would have reached the peak by 10:00 a.m. With my friends we got there in full heat at 1:00 p.m.

The church has a viewing tower (entrance charge: PLN 10), which lets visitors behold splendid panoramas of nearby hilly landscapes. I am fond of looking at the world from above, hence joyfully forked out a tenner to take delight in it.

On Sunday we scrambled up Łysica, the highest hill around, mere 612 metres above sea level. We marched up just past a rainfall, so the ascent, though short, was a bit of nasty. Predictably, droves of tourists on rocks on top.

Later on we drove to Zagnańsk to pass by apparently the oldest tree in Poland, oak Bartek, whose age is estimated at between 700 and 1,000 years. The very tree needs to be fenced off and solidly propped up to retain its monumental nature 

The area is abundant in several tourist attractions and we could have seen more of them, had it not been an overly lazy weekend ;-)

Warsaw climate statistics

A seemingly cold and wet weather in July this year has prompted some brain-devoid denialist to call into question an only accelerating global warming. In fact the previous month was not cooler nor wetter than 1991-2020 average. Mean temperature in July 2025 reached +19.9C, vs. long-term average of +19.7C and total precipitation reached 54.4 millimetres, vs. long-term average of 82.2 millimetres.

Although there is little chance I convince conspiracy theorists, I resolved to take little autistic delight in playing with numbers and compiling chart showing how the climate in the capital of Poland has evolved since 1951. In my analysis I fully rely on resumed and revamped Meteomodel page, which in turn has brilliantly processed raw data available from the Polish Met Office (IMGW).

First comes a standard temperature by month chart, with three lines representing 30-year averages in three measurement periods. They illustrate climate change dynamics in the perspective of two decades. You can clearly see winters and summers are "most affected" periods, while in spring and autumn average temperature increase at a slower pace.

From this chart on, I begin to illustrate long-term trends with rolling 10-year and 30-year averages. The outcomes clearly indicate mean yearly temperature in Warsaw has risen by more than 1 Celsius degree over the last 40 years and the warming has speeded up over the last decade.

Looking at winter months only (note 0 on the horizontal axis stands for 0C), we see harsh winters are the thing of the past, the last such one was in 2012/13. The recent winters with mean temperatures above 0C do not even meet the formal definition of a winter.

For summer months, the temperature incline trend is even clearer. Today one forgets summers with average temperature below +17C were quite prevalent in 1960s and 1970s. Note the 10Y rolling average has gone up by 3 Celsius degrees over merely four decades.

One of the biggest reasons to worry about the impact of the climate change are heat waves. The number of days defined as hot back in the second half of the twentieth century ran at 5 a year on average. In recent two decades it skyrocketed. Hence summer 2025 with 4 hot days so far is perceived as mild.

But quite often temperatures only nears +30C and this is captured by the chart showing number of days with day-time high above +25C. Here the trend is also clear, however less disturbing.

Heat waves are periods of misery not because of hot afternoons, but due to nights which do not bring relief. A few decades ago heat was more bearable than these days, as dawns with minimum temperature above +20C were an absolute rarity. The stats however, do not capture several nights with temperature dropping for a few minutes barely below +20C. Counting them would require lots of manual work, which at the moment is none of my priorities.

The number of days with frost declines, yet here the tendency is much slower than for warmth-related figures. A few decades ago a frost in May was quite usual. These days ground frosts in May happen, but two metres above ground temperature stays positive. Half of 10 recent Octobers were frost-free, while there has been no frost-free April so far (the earliest last frost reported on 2 April 2016.

The number of days with no thaw in turn decreased more dramatically, especially in recent years, heralding a demise of proper winters. Winters in Warsaw may soon have a through-zero pattern, with snow or sleet falling and melting and slippery surfaces being a plague.

A few decades ago Warsaw saw around 20 days with double-digit frost in mornings. Looking at the last decade such number dropped close to 5, with some winters with all-season lows above -10C. And within last 13 years temperature dropped below -20C only once, on 18 January 2021. Before 1990 such harsh frosts were observed every second or third year.

If winter, then snow. Here numbers bring even more ample evidence of winters retreating. The 10Y average number of days with snow cover peaked in 1971 close to 80, while in 2025 it fell to little more than 30. Here of note are mild winters from late 1980s and early 1990s which for a while gave way to proper winters, the last proper one ending in April 2013. It was all downhill since then.

Hope you've enjoyed the read to the same extent to which I've drawn pleasure from compiling this bunch of charts and accompanying comments.

Not a posting next week (off to Góry Świętokrzyskie).

The place where I belong, episode 2025, vol. 1

Weather this July has been merciful so far. Except for minor incidences of heat and abundant rainfalls at times, summer over the most of the month was conducive to staying outdoors. Night-time lows just above +15C, afternoon highs close to +25C, brisk mornings and evenings are the summer weather I adore. In such circumstances outdoor beckons. Such was the case on Thursday, when I decided to get over a brain-wrenching working day by cycling around the neighbourhood.

I was lucky to pass through several green lights while crossing intersections and was first forced to halt where al. KEN and ul. Indiry Gandhi meet. The building of Multikino has been demolished a few months ago, yet I’m still missing it. The only cinema in the district, a remarkable landmark of Ursynów is gone, along with Adana Kebab eatery, which was a meet-up venue for local Szlachetna Paczka volunteers for years.

Few people know east of ul. Nowoursy- nowska and south of SGGW campus one can find an experimental estate of detached and semi-detached houses built shortly after WW2 for the university’s staff. Shrouded in greenery, look most splendidly when spring blossoms. Sadly, outside most houses inhabitants were outdoors, working in gardens, or just sitting and taking delight in a lovely evening, hence I did not snap them. I will make up one day.

Having cycled down ul. Orszady, I pass the most luxurious residential estate in Warsaw, on the edge of Wilanów. Prices of last available houses are not disclosed (until 10 September 2025, thereafter a full disclosure of property prices will be proscribed by law), but the Internet tells they range from PLN 3.2 million to PLN 6.5 million. I can afford to park my bike outside the gate.

Some time later, having ridden up ul. Pałacowa, I reach the back gate of the Natolin palace park, an area closed off for ordinary visitors since decades. If one day I book a trip to the palace and surrounding gardens and photographing will not be prohibited, I will come up with a proper coverage.

Then came my favourite section, a path along the Skarpa Kabacka nature reservoir. Instead of taking multiple photos and picking the best snaps, I wanted to take one, yet superb. Consequently, I have not taken a single photo by the time I reached the escarpment (a lousy snap to the right). This means another such trip on the same route will be due in August and its documentation published here.

Make the most of the summer before it’s gone or before the unbearable heat comes over, which fortunately is unlikely over the next two weeks.

Online dating – first chapter closed in 2025

Half a year past terminating the last relationship, the time was up to open myself for some new mating opportunities. I have not yearned badly for pairing up with somebody. I still remember how lousy the recent relationship was at times and appreciate benefits of being single and superiority of such status over being in a dead-end relationship. On the other hand, I do not want myself to get too used to being on my own, hence the decision to stray out of the comfort zone.

Given the above, I should have cared little and had fun from meeting new women and giving them up if we did not fit each other. Instead, I ended up quite stressed out, totally not pertinently to magnitude of dating. I still have not dug into reasons of my distress.

Dating applications have somewhat moved on since my previous short episode with them in spring 2022 (not saved for posterity here). The crucial change from my viewpoint is a declaration on family plans. You can choose to write (or not to fill it in) whether you want to have offspring, not want it, do not know yet or are open to it. The former two declarations are clear, with women who do not want children being swipe left by me. With the latter two I do have an issue. A woman aged 25 might still not consider whether to have children, but a woman aged around 35, given her time is running out, should have made up her mind already. The “open to kids” badge is even more confusing. Given the hardships of pregnancy and upbringing, responsibilities and limitations parenthood involves, having nothing against having your life turned upside down sounds at best absurdly. Unless it means they don’t mind their partner having children from previous relationships.

Until now I met four girls. Spoiler alert – there was no second date in any case.

The first girl, Agata, aged 31. Was kind of businesslike, determined to raise a family soon. Before we met, she had begun a straightforward evaluation of me, mentioning several times if I had been awarded an upside or a downside. With limited hope it would click in I decided to meet her. The offline chat was nice, although overly revolved around her previous experiences with men, with a story of her peer, who struggled to have an erection and asked if they could watch porn together too boost his desire, being just the tip of the iceberg. We mutually agreed the chemistry was badly missing and went separate ways.

The second girl, Ola, aged 32. With hindsight, I wondered why I had swiped her right, but decided to give it a try. Subjective red flags cropped up soon, meaning I spotted potential conflict areas I have gone through in previous relationships and given I learn from my mistakes, I have resolved to back out of this after the first date. I communicated it openly one day after we met offline, as out of four girls she was the only one intent on developing the relationship.

The third girl, Monika, aged 34. Quite brisk and talkative in the app, turned out to be a bit of shy when we met offline to take a walk together. I suppose she was a kind if disillusioned when she confronted her image of me with me in reality. There was no major chemistry, however since her bio in the app was scant, I could have risked continuing getting to know her better. The morning after our date the match in the app was deleted. I have been ghosted and have not gotten over it lightly. It was not the very rejection, but the silent form it which has left me slightly burnt and bruised. If you treat people on your way with respect and communicate unpleasant messages openly, even if it depletes you of energy, theoretically you do not deserve to be ghosted. Nevertheless, such practice is prevalent in online dating and however crummy it is, there is no way to avoid it altogether.

The fourth girl, Dominika, aged 34. Seemed the nicest, a good soul and looking really nice. Messaging between us nearly faded after around a week, but in a whiff of irritation after being ghosted by Monika, I asked her to communicate openly if she did not want to meet me (she first proposed an offline walk). To my surprise, she did not give up on me and eventually we met. Chemistry was not in the air and the next day she informed it had been our first and last meeting.

For the time being my impression is that much has changed in dating apps since 2020, sadly for the worse. Maybe my sample is too small, but I observe communication skills on the wane. I could blame myself, but in other social situations my conversations go on smoothly and do not need to be awkwardly upheld. Maybe it is just the lack of chemistry, maybe involvement of only one person to carry on with talking.

Maths-wise, with more single women than men in my age in Warsaw or around, my reasonably decent look and other features, things should go well. The reality turns out to be against me. Pragmatically, I want to build a relationship with a woman who shares most values with me and wants to raise a family soon. The core reason, which I have identified away from the dating apps is that many single women in their 30s have their decent lives, filled with activities, live it up and prefer to be single to pairing up with a “good enough” partner. Besides, a man is hard to be squeezed into daily scheduled filled with work, pets, hobbies, sport, friends and family. I have asked ChatGPT why developed countries are plagued with an epidemic of singletons and its response unsurprisingly squares with my observations. A lower percentage of people in relationships is one of major causes of the demographic crisis exacerbating in Poland (fertility rate in my homeland gets close to 1.0).

Time to come up with an alternative vision of life if I do not manage to find a life companion to set up a family with. Given how ghastly the prospects of finding a reasonable woman are, throwing in a towel and settling for a lonely life might one day become the preferable option…

Genoa low over Poland

The ever-intensifying global warming amplifies frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events. After months or insufficient rainfall and consequent drought, the tide has turned. The Mediterranean Sea, whose temperature is affected by a massive heat wave, in early July 2025 ran 6 Celsius degrees higher than usually at this time of year, produced masses of water vapour. The evaporated water formed rainclouds, which drifted towards central Europe, in a language of meteorology as part of a low pressure system, called Genoa low.

The very existence of the Genoa low and its abundance in rainfall are not a problem itself. The hazardous nature is driven by its co-existence with an anticyclone, which does not let rainclouds roll by and spread precipitation over large swathes of land. Instead, a strong anticyclone renders the Genoa low stationary, which effects in several hours of solid rainfall in a specific area. Such situation happened in September 2024 and resulted in severe, though confined to a few towns, flooding in south-western Poland.

This time the forecasts were not alarming as then, but pointed at serious peril of intense rainfall in Śląsk Cieszyński. A serious risk of above-average precipitation was clear in forward-looking visualisations over a week ago. The scale of a potential disaster, however, was unknown until last moment. Genoa lows are poorly predictable, an anticyclone’s behaviour is the core unknown variable. The less stationary a low is and the less abrupt its nature, the lower the risk of flood.

This year the precedent drought has effectively reduced danger of a major flood, however local flash floods were quite conceivable, especially since dried-up soil could have difficulty absorbing large amounts of rainwater.

The rainfall began on Tuesday, 8 July and has lasted until now. It turned out to be far less intense than predicted and wreaked less havoc than many feared. Preventive actions have been taken to avert a disaster witness mere 10 months earlier in similar circumstances.

Countrywide there have been no submerged inhabited areas and no major losses were reported.

In Warsaw no records have been broken. The highest one day precipitation over the last week reached 24 millimetres (vs. 93.8 millimetres of rain fallen on 19 August 2024). Also the monthly record of the wettest July, set in 2011 (295.8 millimetres over the entire month) seems unthreatened as of now (so far the accumulated precipitation in the first 12 days of the month totalled 28 millimetres. Next days are to bring moderately wet high summer, with no extreme weather. May heat waves and other radical events pass Warsaw by!

Warsaw escapes heat waves (so far)

The title holds true, but it only escapes waves so far and has not escaped the heat altogether. Until yesterday, there were only 3 days with day-time highs above +30C, including 3 July 2025, when temperature topped at +36.5C, the highest since or 8 August 2015 (+36.6C) and beating July heat record for Warsaw (+35.9C set on 31 July 1994). Today we expect another day with maximum temperature in excess of +30C, then shall ensue a cooler period.

When the heat lasts short enough, you can take shelter from it indoors, provided you do not let your dwelling heat itself up. Unlike most people, I let in cooler air at night, then close windows and pull down external rollers and sit in a closed-off flat until late evening, thus enjoying some +22C without air-conditioning.

The capital of Poland has been in the luck so far, looking at the plagues which afflicted cities in south-western Europe.

In Lisbon thermometers on 29 June 2025 showed +41C.

In Madrid:
- June 2025 was the hottest one since records began,
- the heat wave lasted since 27 May 2025 with some intermittent slightly cooler days with day-time highs between +25C and +30C,
- over that time on 34 days temperatures topped above +30C,
- therein on 23 days temperature was higher than +35C, but never reached +40C.
And the heat is not going to ease off.

In Paris the heat wave commenced on 13 June 2025, since then the city recorded 13 days with temperatures above +30C (and several only slightly less hot), with a high of +39C on 1 July 2025.

In Rome the heat wave has kept plaguing the city since 29 May 2025. Over that time there were 33 days with maximum temperature above +30C and 13 days when temperature exceeded +35C. Here also the prospects for milder weather give little hope.

The entire northern hemisphere has been scorching in recent weeks. We had a heat dome over the USA, temperatures above +45C in Sahara, peaks above +50C in Kuwait, Iran and other Arab countries, massive heat waves in continental Asia and in Japan.

The rest of summer is foreseen to be warmer than average also in Poland, however from tomorrow on we will see a spell of milder weather, before most likely a longer heat wave comes over in mid-July.

The climate change is here and summer months are the time when it hits us most severely. Climate stats indicate clearly the global warming is speeding up in our region. The current benchmark period for Warsaw is 1991-2020. Comparing most recent weather records to the averages from that period you will see that:
- the last summer (defined as June + July + August) which was not warmer than average was in 2009 and the last colder than average summer was in 2004,
- in the current decade there were only 5 (our of 54) months when average temperature was markedly colder than average for that month: April 2021, August 2021, April 2022, September 2022, May 2025 (note lack of any such month in 2023 and in 2024),
- in benchmark period 1971-2000 the average number of days in a year with day-time highs above +30C was 5.0; in the current benchmark period it was 9.5, but looking at last 3 summers: in 2022 there were 19 such hot days, in 2023 – 16 hot days, in 2024 – 22 hot days, which is a record-high number.

Heat waves used to hit since decades or even since centuries. They used to come once in several years. Recently each year brings at least one heat wave and those which plague us last longer and are more intense. If the climate change carries on like this, southern Europe will become an unbearable place to live. Several tourists already begin to shun it in high summer, as temperature and not just unpleasant, they pose a hazard to health.

In Poland we will need to adjust to hotter summers. Air-conditioning, powered by solar panels will have to become prevalent. In public spaces concrete will need to give way to greenery. We are on our way towards a disaster, a world which will become an unfriendly place to live. This will be the price to pay for chasing GDP growth and consumption fuelling it. The side effect will be productivity lost due to the heat, which is inexorable.