Does Odessa, Ukraine have snow? – This is the most widespread question among travelers, who have never been to Ukraine. Let’s consider some facts proving that there is snow in Odessa.

          Catastrophic snowfalls

There have been many catastrophic snowfalls in the history of Odessa. The heaviest snowfall in Odessa, Ukraine, recorded by meteorologists fell on December 16, 2009 -53 mm.

Before that, the snowfall of February 25, 1962, was considered the worst. Leningrad helped our city to eliminate the consequences of that cataclysm by sending dozen snowplowing (not to be confused with snowplows!) machines, which are still absent in Odessa.

Extreme frosts repeatedly caused freezing of the northern part of the Black Sea - at least 20 times in the last two millennia. Three or four times, if we believe geologists, historians, Pont Evksinskii froze completely - so that from modern Bulgaria to Georgia it was possible to get on a sled. In the 30s of the XIX century, teacher of Latin of Richelieu Lyceum, Knorre, took advantage of the frosty weather, rode on skates to Nikolaev, where his brother, maritime astronomer, lived, worked. In the XX century, the Gulf of Odessa, neighborhood was frozen in 1977, the last time Odessa residents could see the ice field instead of waves in 2012.

Separate story - icing, which occurs with sharp temperature drops: when it rains first, the thermometer column falls below five degrees frost. The most serious icing events were in 1975, 1988. This time most of Odessa was without:

• lights and heating,
• bakeries,
• public transportation was out of order.

The stores, which had already been poorly stocked, stood empty. School classes were canceled, and the residents did nothing but help janitors to clear debris of trees that had fallen under weight of ice.

Does Odessa have snow? Answer is: “Of course, it has!”

          Records

The coldest day in Odessa’s history was Sunday, February 10, 1929, when the thermometer showed 29 degrees below zero. That winter, in general, was pretty nasty: severe frost and lack of snow led to fact that in the south of Ukraine and the RSFSR all crops died. Result was failure of grain harvests, peasant uprisings, increased collectivization, which resulted in the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

Ukrainian record of ice growth was also set in the Odessa region: November 2000, in the settlement of Zatishie, Frunze district, ice with diameter of 207 mm was recorded on the wires.

Frost, snow, ice jeopardized the meeting of the XX century in Odessa. Severe snowfall on the twentieth day of December 1900 cut off city from outside world. Because of the snowdrifts, trains stopped moving, sea froze, food prices, kerosene, candles skyrocketed. Worst of all, no shipment of champagne ever made it to Odessa! As a result, our great-grandfathers greeted the new century without the fizzy drink, filling their glasses with ordinary vodka...