Amsterdam has a temperate climate characterised by mild winters, cool summers, and year round precipitation (60-80 cm). The extremely flat landscape means things can change very fast, but thankfully the rain tends to appear in sudden showers and disappear just as quickly. Whippy winds in the winter (1-4°C) can make cycling miserable, but when it's spring again (6-11°C) you'll be thinking tulips and sunshine and a trip to the bulb fields. Summers (14-19°C) can get hot and humid, with active mosquitoes and spectacular thunderstorms, but autumn (9-13°C) is quieter. Though there is usually snow (2005 was particularly spectacular), it doesn't hang around for long. From a long-term perspective, the weather is likely to carry on getting milder and wetter. The average temperature at Dutch weather station De Bilt was one degree Celsius higher over the last twenty years than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.