Poland lies in eastern Europe, bounded on the west by Germany,
and with a long border with the Czech and Slovak Republics in
the south. It has a coastline on the Baltic Sea in the north,
and is bounded on the northeast by Lithuania, and on the east by
Belarus and Ukraine. Most of the country consists of a low-lying
rolling plain below 300 m/1,000 ft but in the south it includes
part of the Sudeten Mountains in the west and the higher
Carpathian Mountains which rise over 1,800 m/6,000 ft towards
the east. Most of Poland has a very similar climate and the same
sequence of weather throughout the year. Winter cold increases
towards the east and in the southern mountains, while the
coastlands of the Baltic Sea have slightly milder winters and
cooler summers (see the table for Gdynia). Precipitation is well
distributed around the year with a summer maximum of rain, often
heavy and accompanied by thunder. Much of the winter
precipitation is snow. Snow covers the ground for an average of
forty days each winter in the