It seems strange to still be surprised by the weather in times of climate change. Yet, accustomed as we are to hot excesses, we are now surprised by every minimal icy thrust that still manages to reach our North West from the Arctic, overcoming the Alpine barrier or taking advantage of the spaces of the Po Valley.
Yet these incursions, which bring us back to winter temperatures (the minimum, if the sun resists), belong to the anthropological memory of our climate. And they resist despite everything, as demonstrated by these increasingly cooler days and the tendency (which is not yet certain) towards near showers of rain and snow at low altitudes. For years we had no longer been accustomed to the 400 millimeters of drought-busting water in the plains and such a snow-covered winter finale in the Alps with a total of four meters of fresh snow observed at 1875 meters above Limone from February until a week ago.
Ua blanket that resisted for a long time (yesterday morning there were still 64 cm at Pancani) despite the frequent and continuous hot waves that have occurred since January with subtropical anticyclones or Foehn gusts. Between them they have covered the greatest number of days in this first part of 2024 and the thermal results are visible.
If the Cuneo average between daily maximum and minimum temperatures in the first three months of the year was 5.8 degrees in the thirty-year period 1991/2020, that between January and March 2024 rose to 8 degrees. An exceptional temperature leap, confirmed and surpassed so far also by this April which with 15.3° of average monthly temperature would equal the extraordinary record of April 2007 which was three and a half degrees above the average for the thirty-year period 1991-2020 ( that of climatic reference).
After the cold incursion of these days and in view of the next ten, still refreshed by the Arctic, it will be difficult for this latest disturbing heat record to be maintained until the end of the month. The return to a sort of normality of our spring climate will be returned to us by one of the most recurring weather folklore figures in our cultured and peasant tradition: that of the “Knights of the Cold”.
These Arctic incursions at the end of April belong to our history as well as to our climate culture. A popular wisdom, enriched by a centuries-old experience that identified in the mythical calendar figures of San Giorgio (23 April, next Tuesday) and San Marco (25 April) the fantastic knights who on their icy steeds would transport the last, perhaps the very last, spire of winter.
The end of April was very worrying for a small peasant economy that was still trembling at the memory of the unseasonably cold blasts of a modern ice age that lasted in the Cuneo area between 1560 and 1850.
And the Occitan saying from the upper Po valley «Gioursèt e Marchèt i fan sun uvernèt» was the graceful image used to exorcise that dangerous «little winter» at the end of April, deadly for the first crops and promising flowerings. Thus the familiar terms of endearment of Gioursèt and Marchèt could serve to flatter two armed warriors, venerated in religious devotion but secularly feared. Knights of the Cold, in fact. About to return this year.
