Germany gripped by third day of record cold

Germany marked record low temperatures for the third day in a row on Thursday, with meteorologists measuring a frosty -33.4 degrees Celsius (-28 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Bavarian Alps in the early morning hours.

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The pitiless temperature was registered at 8 am in the Alpine town of Funtensee, weather service Meteomedia reported. Clear skies, dry air and little wind were the perfect combination of factors to beat out yesterday’s record of -27.7 degrees Celsius (-17.86 degrees Fahrenheit) in Dippoldiswalde in the eastern state of Saxony.

Funtensee reached Germany’s coldest-ever measured temperature on Christmas 2001, with -45.9 degrees Celsius (-50.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

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Other parts of Bavaria and the city of Weimar in the eastern state of Thuringia reported temperatures below -15 degrees Celsius on Thursday morning.

Police reported the second cold-related death on Thursday, saying a homeless woman had frozen to death overnight in her tent in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate where temperatures reached -16 degrees Celsius. The 58-year-old was not prepared for the cold, they said.

“The woman was covered with only a normal blanket,” a Trier police spokesperson said, adding that she and her 43-year-old companion had refused several offers from a hotel owner to put them up in a room for free.

Meanwhile the country’s second-largest body of water, the Müritz in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, has frozen over.

"We have measured ice between four and 10 centimetres thick on the four upper Mecklenburg lakes," Olaf Schatzki from the Water and Shipping Authority in Waren told news agency DPA, adding that the ice on the 117 square kilometre Müritz lake is too rough and thin for ice skating.

While the low temperature reports are enough to keep many Germans bundled up at home, the weather is expected warm to up after a several-day cold snap.

Click here for The Local's weather forecast.