Heat record: Earliest ever "spring" week in NL

Wednesday marked the fourth consecutive day-heat record broken at the national weather station in De Bilt, when temperatures climbed to 16.9 degrees at 12:30 p.m. And with that, two more records were broken. This is the first ever winter with five days of maximums above 15 degrees in the Netherlands. And the high temperatures mean that this week will get the "spring" label - the earliest one ever measured in the country, Weerplaza reported.

The previous heat record for February 24, since temperature measurements started in 1901, was 16.7 degrees in 1990. The first heat record of this streak was broken on Sunday, with a maximum of 16.9 degrees Celsius in De Bilt. Monday was the second broken record at 16.2, and Tuesday the third at 17.8.

The previous record for number of "mild days", with maximums above 15 degrees, dated from 2019 with four days. In the previous century, there were never more than three mild days in the winter.

This is also the earliest spring week ever recorded. "On average, the first spring week starts around 29 March. In the previous climate period this was 3 days later, in the middle of the last century around 10 April, and at the beginning of the last century the average was around 13 April," Wilfred Janssen of Weerplaza said.

From Thursday, Weerplaza expects lower maximums and no further day heat records broken for the time being. The 2021 counter for heat records will therefore remain at four for the time being.

Last year, 13 heat records were set in De Bilt, and one single cold record. "The fact that more heat records than cold records are being broken is due to global warming. Without warming, the ratio between heat records and cold records would be virtually the same," Weerplaza meteorologist Raymond Klaassen said.