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After mild winter, nature wakes up earlier in Switzerland

Mild winter: Nature wakes up earlier again in 2025
Mild winter: Nature wakes up earlier again in 2025 Keystone-SDA

Once again this year, nature has woken up earlier than normal, between a week and ten days ahead of schedule, according to the meteorologists. They explain that this is due to the mild winter months.

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Temperatures throughout Switzerland in January and February 2025 were generally much warmer than the average for the period 1991-2020, the Meteonews weather service said in a statement on Tuesday. January was 1.5 degrees warmer and February 1.7 degrees. The first ten days of March were 2.5 degrees warmer than the multi-year average.

According to Meteonews, the longer growing season has a number of positive and negative consequences. It benefits agriculture, particularly market gardening, cereals, berries and fruit. Raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and cherries can all be harvested earlier, which means that consumer demand for these local products can be met sooner.

However, the risk of damage caused by late frosts is increasing. The same applies to the pressure of pests, which survive milder winters more easily.

Meteonews reports that hazel trees began to flower in the last ten days of January, more than two weeks earlier than in the 1950s. The weather service adds that forsythias and tulips began flowering around a week to ten days earlier.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

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