• 05/12/2022
• By wizewebsite
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New Year's Eve temperature record: In 1978 it cooled by 30 degrees, the country collapsed, children did not go to school<

On the evening of December 31, most of Czechoslovakia was really warm for this time of year. The weather was more like early spring than the turn of the year. Nevertheless, meteorologists have already warned of the arrival of cold air. But that it would cool down by thirty degrees overnight, I didn't even want to believe it.

Difference of 34 °C

The record holder for the measured temperature difference over twenty-four hours was the station in Městec Králové, where people who had gone to bed woke up to New Year's Eve from 14.9 °C on New Year's Eve -19.1 °C. The difference between two consecutive days was 34 °C! The temperature dropped by up to three degrees in a single hour.

But even in other places of the republic, people were not surprised. After all, the situation was similar in a considerable part of the surrounding states, where, for example, in Germany, this situation is still remembered as the snow disaster of 1978. In contrast to Czechoslovakia, the north of Germany was also covered by really abundant snowstorms.

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Frozen champagne

Probably the most smiling and the least problem was the lack of alcohol for the celebratory toast in some cases. People who decided to chill their wine on the balcony, for example, often discovered just before midnight that the bottle was simply frozen...

Others were struggling with absolutely insufficient clothing in the morning, because they often left for the New Year's Eve celebrations in the evening with only very little. Party dresses and a warmer throw over the shoulders for the ladies or a jacket to accompany them for a trip around town were more than enough. But that cold front came, by morning everything was different, and the return from the celebration woke up and refreshed many a party participant richly provided with alcohol.

The state was collapsing

Not that lower temperatures never appeared in the republic, but at the turn of 1978 and 1979 several unfortunate phenomena occurred. First, it was the unusually high preceding temperatures that brought only rain instead of the more usual snowfall. And then - the cooling came so quickly that many companies did not prepare enough for such a change in weather or underestimated the preparation.

It is necessary to realize that this is the end of the seventies, when it was mainly heated with coal. And it was this rain-soaked coal, stored either outdoors in piles or even in wagons, that the rapid onset of frost turned into an unusable compact mountain. It was impossible to get more coal, machines froze, tracks were destroyed, the state was getting into big problems.

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Coal holidays

Perhaps the only ones who could be happy about this situation were the schoolchildren. For them, the so-called coal holidays began to apply after the New Year, which did not end until January 28. Then the children really enjoyed their winter vacation to their heart's content. But it was not that simple again. Parents usually had to go to work and not everyone had babysitting even then. But there was nothing else to do. In addition to the energy crisis, major problems also arose in transport. Restrictions due to energy saving even affected Czechoslovak Television broadcasts, in means of transport that left, as well as in cinemas and other places, heating was limited.

It was not about the frost, but about the speed of its onset

Basically, the whole of January was subsequently marked by sub-zero temperatures, but it was not an unusually high frost. The temperature averaged around -3°C, but even that was enough to make the material, as well as some navigation channels and others - in short, what froze during the first few hours - simply impregnable for the next few weeks. Only the topping that came after mid-January helped. That's when life in Czechoslovakia began to slowly return to normal.

Sources: Czech Television, memories of witness Karel Vojáček

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