The recent cold wave across Southeast Europe to Turkey was caused by a polar vortex generation likely related to stratospheric warming in the polar region of the past 6 weeks. Another intense trough spins out of that regime and brings heavy rain to Southwest and South Europe through the next 10 days.

A late season cold wave has produced significant crop damage to the Eastern Europe/Black Sea/Turkey/Southwest Russia region. The farthest east cold spike was April 10-11 causing the worst freeze since 2014 in Turkey. The peak cold during April 7-9 was across Romania and Ukraine. Coldest mornings during the freeze events were in the -10’sC!

Comparing the CIC-CA summer 2025 outlook and the NOAA/CPC probabilistic summer 2025 outlook to establish confidence indicates a high probability of hot to very hot summer climate in the West, heavy rains in the Southeast, and a North-central to Interior Northwest U.S. drought.

Cold temperatures spread across Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Southwest Russia this morning forecast to return Thursday morning concentrated on Eastern Ukraine. Another pulse of cold shifts into Romania and Western Ukraine Friday morning. The cold slowly retreats northward this weekend.