St. Petersburg Sees Just 2.5 Hours of Sunlight in December

Dec. 31, 2019

It's been a gray December in St. Petersburg. Alexander Demianchuk/TASS

St. Petersburg barely got a glimmer of sunlight this month, with the rays peeking out of the clouds for a measly 2.5 hours over four days in December, forecasters said Monday.

Despite the month-long darkness, 2019 was among the warmest years on record, the 78.ru news channel quoted St. Petersburg’s chief forecaster Alexander Kolesnikov as saying.

The sun in Russia’s second-biggest city still shone for longer than in Moscow two years ago, when it appeared for just six minutes in December 2017.

The Russian capital is this year reeling from a lack of traditional snow coverage, with municipal authorities resorting to trucking in heaps of snow for the holiday season.

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