Weather of Armenia

The Weather of Armenia is sometimes possible to find all the four seasons at the same time. When succulent apricots, peaches and grapes, high on the mountain slopes which surround the valley there is not enough heat even for grain to ripen, while still higher there are places covered with snow all the year round. It may be concluded on the basis of archaeological data and the information furnished by ancient Greek and Armenian historians that the climate of the Armenian Plateau has changed very little from the historical times.

The Ararat plain and the Sevan basin have the longest duration of sunshine-about 2,700 hours a year. Alexandria in Egypt does not have many more; the shortest duration of sunshine is in mid-mountain areas of the forest zone (about 2,000 hours). In the foothills there is hardly a sunless day between June and October.

Armenia's different varieties of climates depend on the absolute height of the land. They vary from the dry subtropical to the mountain tundra climate. The following six basic; types can be distinguished. Another type of climate is the dry continental type. It prevails along the middle reaches of the Arax up to an elevation of 1,300 m. It differs from the dry subtropical climate by its cold winters.

History

According to historical sources, in ancient times the winter was the same as it is today, fairly cold in the Armenian lowlands and high in the mountains. Xenophon, in his Anabasis (The Retreat of the 10,000), which describes the retreat of 10,000 Greek mercenaries through the Armenian mountains in the autumn, relates that at night, when the soldiers were asleep, snow fell in the mountains and covered the men and their weapons. He writes that the snow that fell in one night was about one meter deep. In the same work he notes that the Armenians protected themselves against the freezing frost by rubbing fat or almond oil into their bodies [Xenophon the Greek historian (4th century B.C.),] . Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi (5th century A. D.). He described the climate of the Ararat plain as hot and dry in the summer.

References

External links

* [http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11119828&PageNum=0 Blizzard sweeps up Armenia, temperatures go subzero]