This is all the snow there is in Moscow on 28 December 2019. The snow was trucked in and is being guarded in the Red Square. Photo: mariksa_10 / Instagram
This is all the snow there is in Moscow on 28 December 2019. The snow was trucked in and is being guarded in the Red Square. Photo: mariksa_10 / Instagram

By Andrew Roth
29 December 2019

MOSCOW (The Guardian) – Moscow has been so warm this December that the government has resorted to sending trucks filled with artificial snow to decorate a new year display in the city centre.

Videos of the delivery for a snowboarding hill went viral as observers noted the irony of bringing snow to a city that spends millions each year on its removal.

Tonnes of snow have been brought by truck to the centre of Moscow in an attempt to boost holiday spirit in what has so far been an almost snow-free December, 29 December 2019. The snow started appearing at the capital’s Zaryadye Park and central Tverskaya Street on Friday. Alexei Nemeryuk, the head of Moscow’s trade and services department, told the Govorit Moskva radio station that the snow had been brought in from the city’s ice rinks and will be used to create snowboarding slopes as part of the Journey to Christmas festival. According to meteorologists, the unseasonable warmth has been brought by an atmospheric front from the Atlantic Ocean. Rain – not snow – is forecast for the New Year holiday, Russia’s main festive celebration. Video: Guardian News

“This is all the snow there is in Moscow. It’s being guarded in Red Square,” one Instagram user wrote, accompanied with a photograph from near the Kremlin.

The Moscow region is in the throes of one of its warmest winters since temperatures began to be systematically recorded 140 years ago. The temperature in the Russian capital rose to 5.4C on 18 December 2019, topping the previous record for the month set in 1886.

A man dressed as Father Christmas and a woman lament the snow that was trucked in to Moscow to replace the absent winter snowfall, 29 December 2019. This winter is the warmest December since 1886 . Photo: The Guardian
A man dressed as Father Christmas and a woman lament the snow that was trucked in to Moscow to replace the absent winter snowfall, 29 December 2019. This winter is the warmest December since 1886 . Photo: The Guardian

“It’s not normal at all,” said Alexander Stanko, 62, a former foreman who was admiring the holiday decorations near the Kremlin on Sunday afternoon. As he spoke with a reporter, his granddaughter waved from a carousel set up near Red Square.

“Winters used to be a lot harder here,” he said. “You’d expect a few days with really strong frost and there would almost always be snow by the new year. It has been getting warmer, definitely. That’s why, as you can see, we have this funny snow over here this year.” [more]

Moscow resorts to fake snow in warmest December since 1886