Wretched, wet, windy winter weather

If you are like me and love white winters with a lot of snow and clear sky – stop reading. The weather in Tromsø the last weeks was mostly miserable. We had hardly any frost days and most precipitation came as rain. A lot of rain. And it was windy. Yes, we had winds.

There is still round about 45 cm of snow, but it is wet, icy and has a lot of holes. It’s ugly and hard to walk on.

So it looked like today when I was walking home from the bus stop Prestvannet:

Luckily it looks like that a colder period starts tomorrow and we even may get some fresh snow until the end of the week.

Strange clouds

When I woke up today at 7 o’clock half the sky was red. It was still dark enough for stars being visible and I considered whether this could be some strange sort of polar light.

When I walked to the ski jump it has become less dark and it was clear, that the colours come from the light of the sun rise (09:17 today). Anyhow there must have been some strange clouds up in the sky reflecting the light of a sun still being 8° below the horizon. Even the snowy mountains were crimson red.

When I took a hike with a friend on the frozen snow near Tønsvik my eyes caught another special cloud phenomenon. These pale clouds were colourful due to diffraction. The effect was weak and delicate and so the photo looks a bit boring. No reason to now show it anyhow ;-)

It is 8 o’clock. The sky is clear and I can see Mars, Jupiter, Moon and Venus in the starry sky. In the north there is a very faint polar light.Will it develop? I’ll check until I’ll go to sleep.

The sun is back in Tromsø

Today I saw the sun for the first time this year. Polar night in Tromsø has already ended one week ago but it always takes some days until it rises over the mountains. Yesterday it was cloudy but today was the day. Welcome back, sun.

This is a shot by mobile phone. I may have taken better photos with my small Sony camera but I forgot it in the office.

Night walk

Yes, yesterday afternoon the snow came back. And since I was awake at night and ten to fifteen centimetres of fresh snow covered the ground – the roads had already been cleared – I took a small night walk. Ski jump – the pond with the lifebuoy – the ski cabin and back. So much nicer (and easier to walk) than this weeks slippery roads.

(Photographers note: I edited this photo more than usual, made it black and white and then colourised it.)

Rain, rain, rain

It was so beautiful in the weekend when Tromsø got half a metre of fresh snow. Already on Monday it got warm and it started raining. Since then it has been above zero with a lot of rain of all kinds. Drizzle, steady rain, downpour. Snow became sleet, the roads and footpaths became very icy and roof avalanches tried to hit my car with wet snow.

While it continued raining first the larger roads became free of ice and snow and then even many smaller ones. More than half of the snow has melted away. What a shame! Anyhow, if yr is correct we get new snow on Sunday and colder weather next week. That would be much appreciated by a winter lover like me.

Data from the Norwegian weather service yr:

Date Snow depth at 0:00 CET Rain fall
2025-01-13 124.0 cm 26.7 mm
2025-01-14 94.8 cm 23.0 mm
2025-01-15 88.6 cm 0.2 mm
2025-01-16 72.5 cm 34.9 mm
2025-01-17 64.1 cm 13.9 mm
2025-01-18 55.0 cm

(Source: www.yr.no/nb/historikk/graf/5-90450)

A snowy ski promenade on Tromsøya

When I woke up this morning another 20 cm of snow have fallen within the last 12 hours. Looking out of the living room window and through the glass door of a balcony showed snowy landscapes amidst the town of Tromsø.

At half past nine I start a ski tour, right from my place in Tromsø. My photo task for today: show at least a human artefact on each photo, not only snowy trees.

The snowploughs haven’t been there so I can ski on the streets.

The gravel road to the ski jump is covered with snow, but the cross-country skiing trail has already been prepared. I however want to ski off the beaten tracks. I follow a snow covered trail to the pond and take some photos. That takes a bit of time because the light is so dim that I use a tripod. Remember: we still have polar night for some days.

Then I leave the trail. I immediately sink into the fresh snow up to my knees – with my skis on. And so it continues. The skis are under half a metre of loose snow and sometimes I sink deeper with each step. My ski poles sometime sink in the whole way despite the large snow baskets. That makes skiing pretty exhausting. I follow a snow-covered stream that leads my to a jagged terrain with small but deep gullies. Some of them are three metres deep and impossible to cross for me. Where am I? Is this still Tromsøya? I zigzag through the hilly and snowy forest looking for possibilities to cross the gullies which involves pulling myself forward by grabbing trees. But at the same time it is marvellous to ski through the “wilderness” and I have it all to myself.

After a while I reach another path, also deep in snow. But at least I sink in only 20-30 cm into the snow now and I’m glad that I can just ski along.

The way leads up and down and ends on the main cross-country skiing trail that seems to be prepared permanently. I step aside to make way for the oncoming snow plough. I take a photo but the lens is a bit fogged up. It is only -1 °C and everything is damp.

I follow the trail north until I come to the steep slope where I chicken out – as usual. Too steep for me. I go back and make my way to the barbecue place with the nice view on the district Hamna. No foot steps, I’m first today :-)

For a short while I follow the trail, then I turn right and take a trail to Skihytta. That’s a cabin that occasionally serves hot chocolate and cake on Sundays. Will it be open? First the trail is well prepared but then I am in fresh snow again and on the ascending passages I have a pulse like a hummingbird. Step by step and with some short rests I make progress and after a while my “private” path meets another trail that leads to Skihytta. Hooray! There it is.

Unfortunately the cabin is closed. But the good thing is: from here it’s only 700 metres to my apartment.  First I ski down through the forest, then I unmount my skis because all the streets have been cleared from snow in the meanwhile.

It was only round six kilometres skiing today, but it took me almost three hours, mostly due to the tiring snow conditions and the time-consuming crossing of some gullies. But taking photos with a tripod slowed me down as well.

Note 1: This was not my only workout today. In the afternoon I had to clear another 20–30 cm snow of my parking lot, that I already had cleared yesterday. Then I helped my neighbours a bit. This was a task I had to do today, because …

Note 2: The weekend brought almost half a metre of snow but now the weather will become extremely ugly. Tomorrow it will rain almost 30 mm and in the rest of the week another 60 mm of rain are expected. So I wanted to get rid of the snow before it gets soaked by that rain.

Thank you for the snow, weekend. I really appreciate it. What a pity that we now get a period of rain and thaw.

Clearing snow in Tromsø

This evening I was out in the snow. I walked 1.6 km and this was the route:

What happened? Was I disorientated? Drunk? Drugged? No, none of that. The snowfall was the reason. It has been snowed more or less the whole day and in the last 24 hours (22:00 – 22:00) we got 26 cm of new snow resulting in a snow depth of 103 cm.

I am lucky. The front yard beside the parking place lies about a metre deeper and I don’t have to pile up snow but push it more or less straight into the front yard. The garden gets fuller under the winter and so the way gets longer. Today’s snow clearing covered a distance of 1.6 km according to my tracking app. The last metre is the hardest, because there the snow is still soft and if you made a careless step there you might land in hip deep snow. Or in my case after moving my legs up and down a few times even deeper:

Since it hasn’t stopped snowing yet I will have to shovel again tomorrow. To be honest, I like it. I am outside and get some exercise, I can do it in the dark and the front door of my apartment is never more than 20 metres away. But I want to use my skies tomorrow as well. Last chance before the heavy rain arrives.

Tromsø 2024 – a special end-of-year review

Last December I changed my “work home” in Tromsø from a tiny studio to a flat with bedroom and kitchen. First I was a bit unhappy because the studio was near to the beach Telegrafbukta while the current one lies amidst the island Tromsøya.

But then I realised how beautiful nature nearby is. There are hilly forests, bogs and ponds and a zillion ways and paths leading through.And each season looks different. I walked there the whole year, either walking home after work or just taking a promenade. In winter I used my skis.

Here is a selection of photos from this year:

Back in Tromsø and it’s winter

When I worked in Tromsø on 20 November I took a snapshot through the window panes of the 5th floor. You could guess the sun between the mountains. It would be the last time I’d see the sun in Tromsø this year.

The next day I travelled to Germany to visit friends. I returned yesterday, 30 November and could see the sunset a bit north of Bergen from the airplane back to Tromsø.

In Tromsø we have polar night from 27 November until 14 January next year and it looks like this:

No, it doesn’t! Just kidding.

Polar night (the English term) does not mean, that it is dark all day. Only, that the sun won’t rise or set. The Norwegians – more affected than other countries – have two words. They call the polar night mørketid (darkness time) and reserve the term polarnatt (polar night) for the time where the sun is at more than six degrees below the horizon for the whole day. This applies only to places north of 72°33′ such as Bjørnøya or Svalbard.

Since it is not pitch-black I took a small ski promenade in the forests nearby. And so it looks like on a cloudy 1 December (-4 °C) on Tromsøya:

 

November thaw

It took only four days to melt away 47 cm of snow.

Last Sunday I used skis to glide over the snow in the forest. However, the forecast at yr showed already that this pleasure would be temporary. And yr was right. It became much warmer and rained a lot. My way home on Wednesday was wet and so was the jogging on Thursday.

On Monday the snow depth had been 47 cm. On Friday it was zero. Thaw and the amount of rain led to flooding and several roads and bridges were closed. In the forest and on the bogs it looked like autumn was back.

Today I took another promenade through the near forest and felt like being back in October regarding the weather. With a clear difference: Having this cloudy weather it is not longer bright outside anymore.

Sixteen more days and the polar night in Tromsø starts with the absence of the sun for the following seven weeks. The darker it gets the more I’m longing for snow. It makes everything brighter.