In mid-October, information began to actively spread across Ukrainian social media that the upcoming winter in the country would be warm. The discussion was sparked by a video published on October 14 by Oleh Basarab, an Ivano-Frankivsk instructor in pre-medical and tactical medicine, who visited the Pozhezhevska high-altitude meteorological station in the Carpathians at an altitude of 1,450 meters above sea level. In the video, the man stated that the station's meteorologists had already made a preliminary forecast and, according to all indicators and parameters, the winter would be warm. The publication quickly gained reach and triggered a wave of reposts, but official meteorological agencies gave a fundamentally different assessment of the situation the very same day.
What exactly the author of the viral video claimed
Oleh Basarab specified in the caption to the video that they were talking about "preliminary assessments by meteorologists" and urged not to perceive them as a final verdict: "Real winter is still ahead, so we are following the forecasts." At the same time, in the video itself, he formulated his conclusions much more categorically — "it is already clear to specialists, the winter will be warm" — citing "all indicators, all parameters, and studies" which, according to him, are conducted at the station. Importantly, Basarab is not a meteorologist and is not on the staff of the hydrometeorological service; his professional specialization is pre-medical and tactical medicine. This circumstance, as the agency later noted, explains where the inaccurate interpretation of the station's working processes might have come from.
Official position of the Hydrometeorological Center: long-term forecasts do not exist
Yuriy Horbenko, acting head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Center for Hydrometeorology, stated directly in a comment to RBC-Ukraine that as of mid-October, it is "too early" to talk about the nature of the winter and that the regional center does not make such long-term forecasts. "Autumn hasn't even ended yet. We do not give such long-term forecasts for the winter," he stressed. Horbenko also pointed out that meteorological stations, including Pozhezhevska, function exclusively to observe and collect data, rather than to forecast. "At the meteorological station — I don't know, to be honest, where such information came from. Who said such a thing and why. We do not have such 'forecasters' at Pozhezhevska," stated the acting head of the center.
Who in Ukraine is authorized to give long-term forecasts
According to Horbenko, the regional hydrometeorological center is authorized to issue weather forecasts for up to five days. Long-term forecasting — for a season, for the winter — falls within the competence of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center (UkrHMC), whose structure includes specialized departments for long-term forecasts and corresponding mathematical models. "If we also engaged in long-term forecasts... we could talk about something. But we are authorized to speak for five days," the specialist explained. Thus, even if any preliminary trends are discussed at the high-altitude station, they do not constitute an official forecast and cannot be considered a reliable statement about the nature of the upcoming winter.
Why such publications continue to gain reach
The situation with Basarab's video is a typical example of how "weather myths" are formed in social media. Users who do not distinguish between working observations at a station and an official forecast perceive any statements about the weather as expert opinion. The very fact of presence at a high-altitude meteorological station adds credibility in the eyes of the audience: the viewer sees "real instruments" and "real meteorologists" and concludes that the information is authoritative. Meanwhile, as the regional hydrometeorological center explains, stations do not make forecasts at all, and any conversations about future weather in everyday terms carry no informational weight. Until the official seasonal forecast of the UkrHMC is released, any statements about a "warm" or "cold" winter remain nothing more than an assumption, not backed by methodology and not verified.
At the time of publication of this material (October 16, 2026), not a single authorized body in Ukraine had published an official forecast for the winter season. Meteorologists recommend relying exclusively on data from the UkrHMC and regional hydrometeorological centers, and treating "forecasts" from social media with caution.
