Flowers bloom in Sweden, no winter in sight
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STOCKHOLM, Jan 16 (AFP) Jan 16, 2008

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.

"The biggest seasonal variations have been observed in Norrland (in the
north), where the mercury has registered temperatures above zero on
several occasions," Josefsson said.

According to SMHI's statistics, the average temperature in Norrland for
the month of January during 1960-1990 was minus 15.9 degrees (3.3 F),
compared to minus 3.7 (25 F) for the first two weeks of January this year.

Josefsson said the month of January had in recent years been "milder
than usual", the result of "a change in the climate" in Sweden.