During the third ten-day period of December 2021, difficult weather conditions were observed in many regions associated with the movement of several active cyclones and their atmospheric fronts through the territory of Ukraine. After very warm weather in the first and second ten-day periods of December, at the beginning of the third ten-day period, an intense cooling occurred to establish the winter weather regime throughout the territory, which was caused by cold atmospheric fronts, later an anticyclone, which was again replaced by an atmospheric front with weakening frosts in the last days of the year. On the coldest days, the average daily temperature was 5-10 °С below the norm. Snow cover of different heights was established almost throughout the country. At the same time, the highest snow cover was observed in the central, southeastern and eastern regions. During the movement of the atmospheric front in the last days of the ten-day period, precipitation of a mixed phase was observed, which significantly reduced the snow depth.
The average regional air temperature for a ten-day period in most regions turned out to be 3.5-4.8 °C, in the Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathian, Chernivtsi, Odesa, Kherson and Zaporizhya regions – was by 1.0-2.9 °С below the norm and ranged from minus 2.2 °С (Transcarpathia and the south) to minus 8.6 °С (northeast). On the warmest days, the maximum air temperature rose to 2-7 °С, in the southern, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lvov and Volyn regions – up to 8-10 °С.
Precipitation within 3-7 days in the form of fogs, fog, rain, snow and sleet was observed throughout the country. The average regional number in most western (with the exception of Chernivtsi), Cherkasy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions was close to the ten-day norm (from 12 to 31 mm). In the Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, ten-day precipitation amounted to 24-53% of the norm (4-17 mm). In the rest of the territory, the amount of precipitation for a ten-day period ranged from 123 to 188% of the norm, in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya and Donetsk regions – 220-285% of the norm (from 16 to 44 mm).
As of December 31, snow cover with a height of 11 to 29 cm lay on the eastern fields, Kirovohrad, most areas of the Dnipropetrovsk, some areas of Poltava, Zaporizhya, Mykolayiv, Odesa, Vinnytsya, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi regions and the mountains of the Carpathians. In the highlands of the Carpathians, the snow depth ranged from 38 to 114 cm. In the rest of the country, the snow depth was 1-10 cm, in some areas there was no snow on the fields. For ten-day periods, wintering crops were in a state of winter dormancy.