Weather in Saratov
| What is the weather like in Saratov? Well, the answer is easy. It’s hot in summer, cold in winter, rainy in autumn and slushy, but bright and refreshing, in spring. Trivial, you’ll say. Well, perhaps, but not to my friends from abroad who regularly ask me if they are going to be frozen if they come to visit me in Russia. Not in July, I usually answer.
I’m not likely to forget the summer of 1998 any time soon. That year, the temperatures reached +40°C (104 °F) and remained there for a couple of weeks, and then dropped just slightly. The summer of 2009 wasn’t cold either, though August wasn’t very hot — we never had an opportunity to go to the beach this August, but since we visited it many times in July, it wasn’t a real loss, and we’ve been compensated by an unusually warm September. Two years before, in 2007, August was absolutely sweltering with temperatures standing at +35°C all month.
| Every year is slightly different from all other years, but the influence of the global warming is felt here very well, affecting both summers, when people moan and groan in the heat and winters, which are no longer the old famous Russian winters. We can still get weeks of the real Russian frost, but they are less common than they were in my childhood, and periods of temperatures above 0°C have become longer. Still it is not a good idea to come here in winter without proper winter clothes and boots.
|Apple and cherry trees usually start blossoming in the beginning of May, but sometimes, when the spring happens to be warmer than usual, it can happen in mid-April. Leaves turn yellow and red and fall in October. The first snow usually falls in November, though now due to the global warming we sometimes have to wait for it until January. In short, we have classic four seasons. Nothing disastrous ever happens here: no tornados, earthquakes or anything similarly nasty. The worst thing that can happen is a stormy wind with rain that sometimes comes after a few weeks of heat in summer: the worst thing it can do is a few fallen trees and slight flash flooding that recedes in just an hour or less.
We are lucky to have the Volga, as well as a lot of lesser rivers, so sunbathing and swimming during the summer time is a usual thing. Some people say the Volga is polluted — well, perhaps it is if the water from it is chemically analysed, but it’s still clean enough for swimming.
Many people also fish in the Volga and eat the fish they have caught, so I guess it’s not that bad. I like living here at any rate.
Last modified: 05.11.2009