Macedonia Geography, Climate & Nature

North Macedonia is a landlocked country of the southern Balkans, 24,856 square kilometres of land and 857 of water, bordered by Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the north-west and Serbia to the north; it takes up roughly the northern third of the wider geographical region of Macedonia and is a corridor between central Europe and the Aegean. The country is defined by the central valley of the Vardar, which runs from the north-west to the Greek border, and by the mountains on every side, the highest of them Mount Korab on the Albanian frontier. Three major natural lakes lie on its borders: Ohrid and Prespa in the south-west, shared with Albania and Greece, and Dojran in the south-east.

Skopje, in its valley on the Vardar in the north, has 526,502 people in the city and covers 571 square kilometres; Bitola sits at 615 metres at the foot of Baba Mountain in the south; Ohrid, with over 38,000 people, is the eighth city and the first destination. The four national parks are Mavrovo in the west, the largest at about 780 square kilometres; Pelister on Baba, from 891 to 2,601 metres; Galičica on the ridge between Ohrid and Prespa; and Šar Planina in the north-west.

The Matka canyon, cut by the Treska before it joins the Vardar west of Skopje, holds ten caves and the country's oldest reservoir. The whole country is in an active seismic zone, and the 1963 earthquake destroyed four-fifths of the capital.

North Macedonia has four distinct seasons, with warm and dry summers and moderately cold and snowy winters; the plains have a Mediterranean climate mixed with a continental one, and the mountains are colder and wetter. Spring is often very short. Summers are subtropical, and temperatures above 40 °C are not uncommon in the plains along the Vardar valley; winters, though moderate, can be quite cold, and snowfall is common.

The advisories add the hazards. Wildfires are possible from April to October in the dry heat, and common in summer. Heavy rain in spring and summer brings flooding and landslides. From November to February thick fog can settle on Skopje and divert or delay flights, and the same months bring the year's worst air pollution, mostly from coal and wood heating, which the Canadian advisory calls extremely hazardous. The country is in an active seismic zone; Skopje's earthquake of 1963 is the reference event.

Best Destinations by Month has the practical reading.

North Macedonia has four national parks and lies across four ecoregions: the Pindus, Balkan and Rhodope mixed forests and the Aegean sclerophyllous woodland. Mavrovo, established in 1949 and the largest at about 780 square kilometres, is deep canyons, lakes and dense forest with an enormous number of relict and endemic species; Pelister, Yugoslavia's first national park in 1948 and expanded in 2007 to 14,300 hectares, spans 891 to 2,601 metres, holds more than 1,050 plant species and extensive forests of the endemic Macedonian pine, and shelters the grey wolf, the European otter and the bearded vulture; Galičica lies on the ridge between Lakes Ohrid and Prespa and borders Albania's Prespa park.

Lake Ohrid is the country's natural masterpiece: one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes, with a unique aquatic ecosystem of more than 200 endemic species, World Heritage since 1979, and since 2014 the core of the Ohrid–Prespa transboundary biosphere reserve. The Ezerani sanctuary on Prespa's north shore holds over 120 bird species and the Tikveš reserve 23 species of raptor; the country's forest birds include the imperial eagle, the grouse and the black grouse.

No species-level survey was consulted beyond the sources named in the data file.

The animals a visitor can hope for are in Pelister and Mavrovo: the grey wolf, the European otter and the bearded vulture in Pelister's Macedonian pine forests, and relict and endemic species in Mavrovo's canyons; the imperial eagle among the forest birds; and, on the water, the pelicans and 120 other species of the Ezerani sanctuary on Prespa and the endemic trout and snails of Lake Ohrid, which has more than 200 species found nowhere else. The Tikveš reserve south-east of Kavadarci holds 23 species of birds of prey.

The practical zoology is the advisories': stray animals and farm equipment on unlit secondary roads, and West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne diseases in summer.