Mrazivý únor 1956 v Česku a ve střední Evropě
článek v časopisu Meteorologické zprávy 2026/3 doplněný o vytvořené mapy, medailobky vybraných stanic s extrémy teploty vzduchu a výchozím datovým souborem v interaktivní podobě
Stránky doplňující článek v Meteorologických zprávách vytvořil kolega Jáchym Brzezina, kterému patří za tento počin velké poděkování autorů příspěvku
Abstract
The Freezing February of 1956 in the Czech Republic and Central Europe
Pavel Lipina, Veronika Šustková, Jan Procházka, Miloslav Müller Klára Čížková
February 2026 marked the 70th anniversary of the extremely cold February of 1956. This month is often compared to February 1929, which was the coldest month in the Czech Republic in the last 150 years for which we have the measurement data needed for such an assessment. The daily minimum air temperatures recorded on January 31 and February 1, 9, and 10 (and in Slovakia also on February 16–18) 1956 are often compared to the Czech absolute minimum from February 11, 1929. Based on accounts from eyewitnesses in the Šumava Mountains, there is information suggesting that air temperatures there may have reached as low as around −45 °C in February 1956. For this reason, we initially intended to provide a detailed analysis of the entire winter of 1955/1956. However, upon analyzing the coldest winters, we found that the winter of 1955/1956 as a whole does not rank among the coldest, so we decided against a detailed analysis of the entire winter. We focused primarily on the causes and course of the coldest period, i.e., approximately from January 31 to February 10, 1956, and subsequently on a more detailed assessment of February 1956 as a whole.
Since the Czech Republic is not a very large country and the weather and climate generally do not “respect” national borders, we decided to expand the scope of this episode to cover a somewhat larger area, i.e., including neighboring countries. We included all available data from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, and Austria in our analysis. We believe that this study, expanded to cover the region, will provide readers with interesting information not only about air temperature extremes but also about the availability of meteorological data during this period and in this area.
Since we gathered a large amount of interesting data, datasets, graphs, and maps while analyzing this exceptionally cold episode, we decided to make the information not used in this article available to interested parties on a webpage created for this article.
Keywords: air temperature, Germany, Poland, Austria, Slovakia