Weather tracker: a week of unusual highs and lows for Europe

While Mediterranean countries basked in unseasonal warmth, parts of northern Europe were in the grip of premature cold

There were strong temperature contrasts across Europe over the past few days, with parts of the Mediterranean basking in unusual warmth while a blast of cold air from Siberia brought freezing conditions to northern parts of mainland Europe.

Greece and southern Italy saw temperatures peaking at 25C or 26C on Friday, around 7 degrees above the November average. Meanwhile, Poland, the Czech Republic and parts of Germany were up to 10 degrees colder than average over the weekend, with the temperatures remaining widely below zero through the day and dropping below -10C in places overnight. The warmth experienced by the Mediterranean transferred north-eastwards later in the weekend, across the Black Sea into southern and eastern Ukraine and south-west Russia. Temperatures across these regions have reached the low 20s Celsius in places, while northern and western parts of Ukraine are under the influence of the colder airmass, which had meant that they saw temperatures widely remaining below freezing.