No More Frosty, Snowy Winters in Germany
Climate Scientist, 2000: Germany Will No Longer Get Winters With Hard Frost and Lots of Snow
Mojib Latif told Der Spiegel that winters like those of twenty years earlier were over in Germany's latitudes. Ten winters later the national weather service measured the coldest December since 1969.
What was said
“Winter mit starkem Frost und viel Schnee wie noch vor zwanzig Jahren wird es in unseren Breiten nicht mehr geben” Our translation: “Winters with hard frost and lots of snow, like twenty years ago, will no longer happen in our latitudes.”
— Mojib Latif (climate scientist, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg) · said Apr 1, 2000 · due From the winter of 2000-01 onward
Germany's weather service called December 2010 'very cold and exceptionally snowy': -3.5°C on average, the coldest December since 1969, and Frankfurt airport's snowiest month on record.
The fine print
Der Spiegel ran it on April 1, 2000 under the headline 'Winter ade: Nie wieder Schnee?' (Goodbye winter: no more snow?). The magazine's own summary: 'In Deutschland gehören klirrend kalte Winter der Vergangenheit an' (in Germany, bitterly cold winters are a thing of the past). The DWD figures for December 2010: -3.5°C against a long-term mean of 0.8°C, 59 cm of new snow at Frankfurt airport, and the first white Christmas across the whole country since 1981.
Sources
- Winter ade: Nie wieder Schnee? - Der Spiegel (April 1, 2000)accessed 2026-10-09
- Deutschlandwetter im Dezember 2010: Sehr kalt und außergewöhnlich schneereich - Deutscher Wetterdienst (December 30, 2010)accessed 2026-10-09
- Klimaforscher prophezeite vor 20 Jahren 'nie wieder Schnee' - Berliner Zeitung (January 31, 2026)accessed 2026-10-09
As of Oct 9, 2026
since it didn't happen
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