Late-May Snow Returns To Northern India; Northern Hemisphere Snow Mass Ticks Up; Britain’s May Heat Record Is Not As Clean As Advertised; + The Treasury Takes The Farm
"Today’s urban landscape around London on May 29, 1944 would easily have yielded temperatures >35C."
Late-May Snow Returns To Northern India
Fresh snow has returned to the Kashmir-Ladakh highway in northern India this week.
Snowfall covered parts of Minamarg, Drass and the Zoji La sector on Monday, whitening the higher stretches and pulling temperatures sharply lower.
Late-May snow here is notable, especially along a key travel corridor.
No major damage or traffic disruption was immediately reported, though authorities are monitoring the sector.
Northern Hemisphere Snow Mass Ticks Up
Northern Hemisphere snow mass has ticked up again, as per the latest FMI/GlobSnow reading for May 24.
The increase comes deep into the melt season, when hemispheric snow mass normally falls quickly.
The driver appears to be the lower elevations of Eurasia (GlobSnow data excludes the mountains).
Buryatia, located near Lake Baikal in south-central Siberia, saw heavy late-May snow, with fresh accumulation reported across parts of the region. Mongolia was also hit, with Uvs aimag enduring snowstorms. Farther west, eastern Kazakhstan saw late-May snow as colder air pushed through Central Asia.
These are the kinds of broad late-season snow events that can still register in NH FMI snow-mass data.
The melt season is well underway, yet the Northern Hemisphere snowpack just gained a few hundred gigatons.
Britain’s May Heat Record Is Not As Clean As Advertised
Britain broke its May temperature record on Monday, according to the Met Office, with Kew Gardens reaching 34.8C (94.6F). The previous May record was 32.8C (91F), reached in 1922 and again in 1944.
Kew Gardens is not rural Britain. It is a London station, sitting inside one of Europe’s largest urban heat islands. It has open green space, yes, but that is part of why it spikes so well: it gets the stored background warmth of Greater London without being buried in a narrow urban canyon. Roads, buildings, rail lines, walls, traffic and hard surfaces raise the local baseline, while the open, sheltered grounds allow strong solar heating under clear skies.
