Germany’s Coldest Winters

Key Takeaways

• Nearly all of the coldest winters on record happened between the 1920s and 1960s, with none in the last 30 years. 
• The coldest winter in 1962/63 averaged 5.5 °C nationwide across December to February.
• Cold winters still happen, but they have become warmer and shorter. Since 1960, winter coldness has declined by about 40 percent and winter length by roughly 25 percent.
• Winter in 2010/2011 was the last nationwide winter in Germany that was colder than average. It was also the last with a countrywide white Christmas.

Coldest Winters in Germany

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Learn something new about Germany every week and make informed decisions with confidence.

Stay tuned!

Learn something new about Germany every week and make informed decisions with confidence.

Germany’s coldest winters belong largely to the past. Most of them are clustered between the late 1920s and the early 1960s. Only one winter after 1970 (1984/85) appears on the list, and none have occurred in the past 30 years.

The coldest winter on record (1962/63) had a national winter average of –5.5 °C over three months. That figure combines cold spells with milder periods and reflects conditions across the whole country. Some days and regions were much colder, but the season as a whole was not a continuous deep freeze.

Over the long term, Germany’s climate has shifted. Average temperatures are now around 2.0 °C higher than in the late 19th century. Winters today therefore start from a warmer baseline than those in which most of the coldest seasons occurred.

Recent Winters in Germany

Long-term analyses underline this change. Between 1960 and 2008, winter coldness in Germany declined by roughly 40 percent, while the average length of winter shortened by about 25 percent. In fact, the last winter that was colder than average across Germany as a whole was 2010/201

Cold spells have not disappeared. They still disrupt daily life, transport, and energy use, but they are usually shorter and no longer define the entire winter.

Recent cold winters are not the same as the historically cold winters of the past. What has changed is not the absence of cold. Rather, it is how rare truly extreme winter seasons have become.