The people of Dobřichovice were quite proud of their record, so a year later a marble monument in the shape of a thermometer was unveiled at the beginning of this important event, on which the red mercury reached up to 40.4 degrees Celsius.

The statue was created by the academic sculptor Petr Váňa, the author of the copy of the baroque Marian column on the Old Town Square in Prague or the statue of St. John of Nepomuk, which stands at the bottom of the Slapské dam. Already two years later, however the sculpture fell victim to a vandal, who knocked her down and destroyed her. The culprit was soon caught, he confessed to the crime and paid for the damage.

The frost came from Siberia

On the contrary, the temperature that has ever been recorded in our territory was on February 11, 1929 in Litvínovice near České Budějovice. The mercury in the thermometer then dropped to -42.2 degrees Celsius.

The value was measured by Jaroslav Maňák, a high school professor from České Budějovice, in the weather station he himself set up near Stecher’s mill. According to reports at the time, they hung from the roof up to a meter and a half long, injuring several people when they fell.

The frost was brought by cold air from Siberia, which caused the winter of that year to be considered the coldest of the 20th century. It was freezing cold, but even so, people in Litvínovice were better off than the residents of Oymyansk, Russia, where in 1933 they had -71 degrees Celsius, which is the lowest temperature ever measured in a populated place.

In contrast to Dobřichovice, they do not have a monument in Litvínovice, but a commemorative plaque on Stecher’s mill reminds us of the smashing record of that time.

New Year’s Eve chill of the century

The older ones will certainly remember another interesting record – the biggest drop in temperature in 24 hours, which occurred on New Year’s Eve in 1978. Even on New Year’s Eve afternoon, it was a pleasant ten degrees Celsius and in some places even more, but then a wave of extremely cold arctic air passed over the Ore Mountains air and within six hours everything was different.

When people woke up on New Year’s Day, they found that it was too white outside and minus fifteen, somewhere minus twenty degrees Celsius on the thermometer. For example, in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, the mercury in the thermometer dropped by 30.5 degrees Celsius within a few hours, and similar values ​​were measured elsewhere.

“The first week was the worst, nothing worked at all. We didn’t get to work: We waited three hours for the bus, and then it arrived so full we couldn’t get on it. They didn’t bring food to the store in our village. Fortunately, we still had food left over from the holidays, but we baked our own bread,” recalls Jitka Horáková.

The freezing weather and snow calamity lasted a long time. They stopped transport, paralyzed cities, coal froze at power plants and on wagons, causing major problems in the supply of electricity and heat. Schools declared a week of coal holidays, which eventually stretched to three weeks. The situation calmed down only after a month.

The record led to tragic events

The year-old record for the largest amount of precipitation in one day is also held by Nova Louka in the Jizera Mountains, where 345.1 millimeters of rain fell on July 29, 1897. Today already legendary rainfall record measured by forester Ernst Mieth and verified by auditors ck of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Earth Magnetism in Vienna.

An unusually large amount of precipitation then fell not only on the territory of the Jizera Mountains and Krkonoše, but also in the whole of Bohemia, Moravia, Saxony and Silesia and led to extensive floods, landslides and great damage. 120 victims were counted on the Czech side of the Giant Mountains alone, of which 17 people died suddenly in one house in the village of Dolní Maršov on the Úpa River.

“The historic one-day rainfall total of 345.1 mm, which was measured at the meteorological station Nová Louka, is still a valid record, not only in the territory of the Czech Republic, but also in Central Europe,” point out Jan Munzar and Stanislav Ondráček from the Institute of Geonics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, who undertook detailed research to see if comparably high one-day rainfall totals occurred later in this region.

The lake was created after a devastating flood

Even another record did not bring happiness to anyone. On the afternoon of May 25, 1872, a total of 237 millimeters of rain fell in Mladotice in the Pilsen region in just an hour and a half, i.e. 237 liters of water per square meter. The value was measured by a parish priest in nearby Žebnica.

The intense rain quickly filled the local Mladotick pond, which was then the largest pond in western Bohemia. Its dam could not withstand the huge onslaught of water and burst during the night. Several million cubic meters of water poured into the Mladoticke stream and then into the Střela river. The merciless element destroyed what came, caused landslides and took the lives of almost fifty people.

While the flood marked the definitive end for the pond, two days after the breach of the dam and landslide, the lake, known today as Odlezelské, Potvorovské or Mladoticke, was created. It brought the village another record – it is the youngest lake in the Czech Republic.

Dramatic events that have already passed 150 years ago, people can remember by walking along the local educational trail, which, among other things, leads along the bottom of the former pond.

When it rains a lot, it’s bad, but when it hardly rains at all, it’s also a problem. This was discovered in 1933 by people in Velké Přítočné in the Kladno region, where only 247 mm of precipitation fell during the whole year, i.e. only slightly more than in Mladotice in an hour and a half.

On the contrary, the largest measured annual amount of precipitation was recorded in 1926 in Kořenov – Jizera in Jabloneck, where 2,202 mm of rain fell in one year.

Overgrown Bald Mountain

The highest wind speed in the Czech Republic was measured at Sněžka in January 2007 during hurricane Kyrill, when the impact speed reached 216 kilometers per hour. In February 2020, the devices on Sněžka even really experienced a wind gust, which had a speed of 223 kilometers per hour, but it was on the Polish side.

Sněžka is also the place with the most days with snow cover – there is an average of 186 days of snow per year.

However, the record height of the snow cover must be sought in other mountains. On March 9, 1911, 491 centimeters of snow was measured on Lysá hora in the Beskydy Mountains. The well-known Beskydy peak also holds the record for the amount of snow that fell in a single day – on April 16, 1916, 108 centimeters fell there.