Lush Green Lawns, Blooming Cowslips And Emerging Mushrooms - January w/o Winter In Sweden - AFP

Lush green lawns with no trace of snow, chanterelles sprouting and spring flowers in bloom: winter in Sweden is beginning to look a lot less like, well, winter, meteorologists said Wednesday. "The month of January has been very mild so far," meteorologist Weine Josefsson at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) told AFP.

With the mild temperatures, spring flowers such as cowslips and wood anemones have already started to bloom in the west of the country, while mushroom lovers are delighted to find chanterelles in the forests in the south.

"It's very surprising that chanterelles have already started growing," said Lars-Aake Janzon, a biologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, adding that he had "never seen that before".

In Stockholm, where the weather has been primarily grey and wet without the slightest trace of snow, the average temperature during the first two weeks of January was 1.7 degrees Celsius (35 Fahrenheit), compared to minus 2.8 degrees (27 F) on average during the period 1960-1990, according to SMHI.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/080116173935.k2tmqhx9.html

all this week it has been unseasonably warm. My bulbs are already coming up. IT'S JANUARY!!!

Klimakatastroph! :scared: