Miniskirts have replaced fur coats and lightweight blazers are worn instead of heavy jackets in Moscow as the city basks in the hottest March weather on record.
At the start of the month skiers sped through the Russian capital’s snowy parks wrapped up in woolly hats and anoraks against sub-zero temperatures.
But now under clear blue skies vendors sell ice cream outside the Kremlin to tourists smothered in sun cream and Russians taking a break from work.
“Normally in March there is no sun and it’s so cold you just want to sleep all day,” 18-year-old Elya Khoosnetdinova said, wearing a T-shirt and loose trousers.
“Life is so much better in the sun and I hope it stays like this,” she said and strolled off with a friend back to her classes at Moscow State University.
Temperatures in Moscow hit around 63 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, 6 degrees higher than the average for March and continuing a long, hot sunny spell, a spokeswoman for the state weather monitoring unit Rosgidromet said.
“These are the highest March temperatures ever recorded in Moscow,” she said.
Mild winter
Russia has already had one of its shortest and mildest winters with permanent snow not covering Moscow until the end of January and the spring coming weeks early.
Traffic police have ditched their winter uniforms, thermal vests lie unused in tourists’ hotel rooms and Muscovites are forced to leave the windows of their apartments open to cool rooms heated by a central system set for winter.
Along a pedestrian street people drank beer and sipped coffee at outdoor restaurant tables.
“Sometimes we get the chance to set the tables out on the street towards the end of April, but this weather is more normal in May,” said Andrei Viktorov, a barman at Posh Cafe.
But not everybody welcomes the warm weather. Sales staff at a fur coat store in an exclusive shopping mall near Red Square said they had brought their end of season sales forward by a month.
They offered a 25 percent discount on a fur coat that would normally cost $3,000, the cheapest in their store, and 35 percent off their most expensive $80,000 coat.