Northwestern Russia
Northwestern Russia Geography & Climate
Geography
Northwestern Russia runs from the Gulf of Finland to the Arctic Ocean, across some of the most thoroughly glaciated country in Europe.
Ice-made landscape
The whole region was under an ice sheet until around twelve thousand years ago, and everything follows from that: exposed granite and gneiss of the Baltic Shield, thin soils, moraine ridges, and an extraordinary density of lakes filling hollows the ice gouged out. Karelia alone has tens of thousands of them.
The great lakes
Lake Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe at over 17,000 square kilometres, and Lake Onega the second. Both freeze in winter and both carry islands with monasteries on them — Valaam on Ladoga, Kizhi on Onega. The Neva drains Ladoga into the Baltic through Saint Petersburg in just 74 kilometres.
Saint Petersburg’s site
Built on the Neva delta, on marsh and islands barely above sea level, which is why it floods and why its foundations required driving piles into bog. The canals are drainage as much as ornament.
Taiga and tundra
Coniferous forest and bog across most of the region, giving way to tundra on the Kola peninsula and the Arctic coast.
The White Sea
An almost enclosed arm of the Arctic Ocean, shallow, brackish and frozen for around half the year, with a tidal range of several metres at its head. The Solovetsky archipelago sits in it, and the sea was the route by which Russia traded with England and the Netherlands for a century before Saint Petersburg existed.
The Kola peninsula
Above the Arctic Circle, with the Khibiny mountains, enormous mineral deposits, and a coast kept ice-free year round by the last reach of the Gulf Stream — which is why Murmansk exists.
Climate Patterns
The region has a humid continental climate in the south and a subarctic one in the north, moderated on the coast by the Baltic and, in the far north, by the Gulf Stream.
Winter
Long and dark. Saint Petersburg averages minus 8 to minus 3°C from December to February, with heavy cloud, frequent thaw and refreeze, and only five or six hours of dim daylight around the solstice. Inland Karelia and the north are considerably colder, dropping below minus 25°C, but drier and often brighter.
Summer
Short and mild. June to August runs 15 to 23°C in Saint Petersburg with frequent rain; Karelia is similar and the Arctic coast cooler. Warm spells reaching the high twenties happen but do not last.
White nights
At 60 degrees north, Saint Petersburg gets roughly six weeks either side of the solstice when the sun dips only just below the horizon and true darkness never arrives. The city treats it as a season, with bridges raised at night and festivals running until dawn. North of the Arctic Circle the sun does not set at all for weeks, and does not rise for weeks in December.
Rain and damp
Around 600 to 700 millimetres a year, spread through the year, with persistent low cloud. The damp is what visitors notice.
The Neva floods
A westerly gale in the Gulf of Finland pushes water back up the shallow Neva bay and into the city, and Saint Petersburg has flooded over three hundred times since its founding, twice catastrophically. A barrier across the gulf, finished in 2011, now closes against surges, and the historic high-water marks are still carved on buildings.
Northern lights
Visible on the Kola peninsula from September to March on clear nights.