Early December snaps

More than preoccupied with overload at work and Szlachetna Paczka, hence not feeling like writing up a lofty essay. Instead – some snaps from the neighbourhood, taken on my way to my parents and back, by bike, yesterday.

The old house (being a remnant of the bygone Moczydło village), whose dwellers used a portable toilet put up on a backyard, is no longer inhabited. The plot of land parallel to ul. Moczydłowska most likely has been sold. I wonder if the buyer will be intent to erect here a row of terraced houses, each priced at zillions.

Ul. Leśna connecting ul. Moczydłowska to ul. Puławska is nearly empty. Despite warm, autumnal weather (+7C today, but windy), the forest was anything, but full of walkers, cyclists, nor runners.

Birch trees are the last to shed leaves. The one snapped still retained leftovers of its yellow dressing. If winds continue to blow as strongly as today, by the end of the first decade of December all leaves will be on the ground.

Fancy buying a Christmas Tree? In several spots you can already do so. I am not fond of starting celebrations early and prefer to kick off the festive season as the old tradition proscribes, i.e. on 24 December. People with small children, however, tend to decorate the Christmas trees in early December to create the atmosphere indoors. Outdoors it does not feel like Christmas at all. Judging by long-term forecasts, December 2025 stands a chance to the warmest since records began in Warsaw.

Close to my parents’ house, in Mysiadło, I come across a little flooding which makes ul. Łabędzia impassable for motor vehicles. It brings to mind the effect of downpours in early June 2010 when this very spot was under water too.

The street is waterlogged, I make it by bike, but water slightly plays havoc with brakes. This looks like waterworks breakdown. Fortunately, at my parents’ the water supply was not cut off.

On my way home I stopped over to snap the intersection of ul. Puławska and ul. Jagielska being rebuilt. Local newspapers say ul. Jagielska will be connected to the Piaseczno-bound lanes of ul. Puławska and a new set of traffic lights will be put up here. Not feeling sorry for drivers wasting their lives in traffic jams here.

Not a new post in a week, as Szlachetna Paczka final weekend is due.

October 2025 - weather recap

Seemingly, October 2025 in Warsaw appeared to be a cold and depressingly autumnal one. In fact, temperature-wise it has been perfectly normal, with mean temperature of +8.7C, exactly at the par with long-term (1991-2020) average. Perception of many has been shaped by a series of eight warm Octobers in a row between 2017 and 2024, with mean monthly temperatures ranging from +9.6C (2021) to +11.3C (2019).

The recent October was indeed a rainy one, with monthly rainfall totalling to 68.7 millimetres, vs. long-term average precipitation of 40.2 millimetres The blessed rain (171% of long-term average) has been a drop in the ocean in terms of solving the problem of drought, but we are keeping fingers crossed for next wet months, preferably for a snowy winter. Of note are thunderstorms with heavy, yet short downpours which smashed Warsaw on 26 October 2025 and 30 October 2025. Such phenomena happen very rarely at this time of year.

As the October was rainy and cloudy, temperature fluctuations were low, hence cold afternoons were offset by warm nights and mornings.

We had two frosty days in October (note the absence of sub-zero temperatures in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024), with the first frost being the earliest since 2001. Month-time low of -1.2C was measured on 3 October 2025. The first days of the month were some 5 Celsius degrees colder than long-term average for those specific days.

Month-time high of +18.9C was reported on 23 October 2025, during a short spell of golden autumn. It was the first time since 2010 when the maximum temperature in October was lower than +20C.

Forecasters claim early November will be making up for the lack of above-average temperatures in October, but what is seen in the weather predictions by no means extraordinary for this time of year. In the benchmark period of 1991-2020, the average November's highest temperature stood at +14.8C.

To refresh your memory, in recent two decades we had several spells of November warmth:
+15.5C on 8 November 2022,
+16.0C on 3 November 2020,
+16.5C on 4 November 2019,
+19.2C on 2 November 2018,
+15.8C on 8 November 2015,
+18.6C on 6 November 2014,
+15.7C on 3 November 2013,
+17.2C on 14 November 2010,
+16.9C on 1 November 2008.

Update: today temperatures topped in Warsaw at +16.8C, making it the warmest November afternoon since 7 years.

Clocks have gone backward

I grossly dislike the last weekend of October when dusk sets in an hour earlier than on the day before. The hammer of darkness does not bring me down, but I would definitely prefer to enjoy more daylight in the afternoon than in the morning.

The Daylight Saving Time came first into effect during WW1. I once heard its purpose was to misguide the enemy, but I have not come across evidence to underpin it. Since then it has been broadly used in most developed countries. Currently 34% of world's population shift the clocks twice a year. Bear in mind the “winter” time is a basic time zone, while the "summer" time is the departure giving benefit of longer evenings from April to October and diminishing effect of useless sunlight when most people are still asleep over that period.

One must note since introducing the DST daily routines have changed. This is vividly noticeable in Poland, where people in mass no longer wake up at the crack of dawn to knock on the first shift which ends in the middle of the afternoon. A far more prevalent work kick-off time is 9:00 a.m., but instead of knocking off at 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m., white-collar workers do overtime in evenings. Early morning daylight hance makes little sense.

I am not in favour of moving the clock back and forth twice a year, but this nuisance is preferable to me to staying in winter time all year round and being deprived of long spring and summer evenings. Benefits and costs have been reasonably well-investigated and the latter apparently outweigh the former, but this is insufficient to bureaucrats in Brussels. The process of attempting to scrap the clock shifting within the EU is one of miserable proofs how the EU is paralysed by over-regulation.

Currently EU countries lie in three time zones and given differences in latitudes between the two edges of the continent, Europe will still need to be divided into three zones, but with different boundaries between them. Warsaw and Madrid, around one sun-hour and forty sun-minutes apart should not lie in the same time zone. Time to come to terms with it and let each country choose which time zone suits them best. Majority of Poles posit Poland should run in DST all year round and I hold the same view.

The latest heat in Warsaw ever

As I am a weather and climate statistics freak, knowing nearly by heart the history of weather records in Warsaw and having written 14 winter timelines here, each weather event which modifies weather stats for Warsaw should not pass unnoticed on PES.

With a delay, I note the maximum temperature record for July was broken on 3 July 2025, when temperature peaked at +36.5C, beating the reading of +35.9C dated 31 July 1994.

Last Sunday, on 21 September 2025 day-time high in Warsaw reached +30.8C. It was the first incidence of heat (defined as maximum temperature in excess of +30C) in the third decade of September ever. Moreover, the latest heat record, until last Sunday set on 14 September 1951 was broken by 7 days. Those are stats for Warsaw stand-alone. Country-wide, the latest incidence of heat was reported on 27 September 2012 (Jarczew, +30.8C, in most Polish cities temperature on that day reached above +26C).

The record Warsaw will be difficult to be beaten quickly, as such inflows of hot air are infrequent (we had it on 1 January 2023 when temperature peaked at +18.9C). Lucky us, it haunted us in the second half of September, not in mid-July as in high summer temperature would be likely to get close to +40C.

A matter of short time will probably be a first incidence of heat in October in Poland. So far the record is +29.3C measured on 3 October 2023 in Legnica.

Warmth spells in months other than summer ones are welcome, but they are a part of a broader picture whose element is a drought ongoing for a decade. Deficiency of rainfall has lasted two months now and forecasts for October, full of sunshine and no consensus about above-average temperatures, give little hope for making up for it.