Räven raskar över isen Dec 5 2015

“Räven raskar över isen”, which means “The fox rushes over the ice” is a popular Swedish folksong which is performed as a singing game at midsummer.

Today I was out quite early, because the weather was still nice: -6 °C and not completely cloudy. And while I took some more images of the ice outside of Storgrundet, wondering when the ice will bear my weight I saw a fox crossing the ice and rushing from one island to the other. I immediately remembered the song.

(The photo itself is a cropped image, the fox was too far away for my 70-200 mm telephoto lens. By the way: the clouds were of an incredibly intense red – even more than the photos)

Soon more clouds came in and it started to get warmer. In the afternoon it started to rain transforming the cold roads into slippery, wet ice tracks. I would deeply recommend to wear broddar – spikes for your shoes when weather is like this.

The street is wet, icy and extremely slippery

Spying the land Dec 4 2015

Tomorrow I thought about paddling through the freshly snowy winter landscape. Is it realistic? Let’s check:

A: the snow warning

smhi (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute) released a class 1 warning for tonight: 10 – 15 cm snow should fall at the coastal areas of Västerbotten. But actually it’s too warm, most of the precipitation has come as sleet and rain. Probably we will have a centimeter of wet snow tomorrow, not much more.

B: the sea ice cover

smhi has another warning, this time for the sea: “higher than 80 cm above mean sea level.” – I took the car to Storgrundet and smhi was right: Parts of the beach are submarine now. But unfortunately the high water didn’t break the sea ice. The ice near the shore is quite soft, I could paddle through. But the rest? Will I manage to break through or do I have to give up?

C: the forecast

At 7:00 it will be clear sky and -6 °C. Nice weather, but at this time it’ll be pitch dark; sun rise is round 9:15. According to the forecast it will be cloudy at 9:00 and start to rain at 13:00. Not enough with that, smhi had another warning for tomorrow: wind will be round 30 knots, that’s round 60 km/h – too much for my kayaking abilities.

Let’s summarise: Hardly any snow, the ice maybe to thick to break, windy + cloudy + some rain later on. I guess, my kayak will stay in the garage tomorrow.

Areas of water Dec 3 2015

There’s a lot of water round Skelleftehamn. North and east lies the Baltic Sea, in the west and south runs the river Skellefteälven and in the forests around there are some lakes such as the one kilometre long Snesviken.

As several times before, winter came when I left the country for a visit in Germany. That figures! But it didn’t last long. In my absence Skelleftehamn got 20 – 30 cm snow and one cold day with a minimum of -12.9 °C. Then it got warmer again and rain melted away most of the snow. Since I came back on sunday it snowed a bit with temperatures round 0 °C.

Today I was curious, how much ice would lay on the waters. First I checked the Baltic Sea round the peninsula Näsgrundet. The water still was completely open. The same at the small boat harbour Tjuvkistan.

Next stop: Sundgrundsbron, a bridge crossing the Skellefteälven which is round 700 meters wide at that place. The eastern part – the mouth of the river – was almost completely open too, with some thin ice at the riversides, while larger areas of the river itself in the west were covered with ice.

Next stop: Rudtjärnen, a smaller lake in the forest nearby. It might look like waves, but the lake is completely iced, as well as the larger Snesviken.

Rudtjärnen – completely covered with ice

Next stop: Storgrundet, which is both an elongated island and a small sandy beach. The Baltic Sea between island and main land is sheltered from wind and freezes over quite early. Round three-quarters of the water were iced too.

I would love to paddle at least one more time before the ice becomes too thick, but I’m afraid that I have to look for another starting point as my favourite Storgrundet.

And then I’m longing for cold weather that freezes over the Baltic Sea so that it’s possible to go or to ski to the islands.

Hello Winter – good bye winter Nov 21 2015

So typical – I leave and winter comes

It’s not the first time that winter comes to Skelleftehamn when I leave it for a week. Yesterday I travelled to Germany and – of course! – winter came again.

The night before it just rained and the small layer of snow was completely gone but when I woke up it had started snowing again and the snow started to cover the grass in the front yard.

When I arrived at the airport it really looked like winter. A snow layer of 10 centimetres covered the parking place and thick snowflakes continued falling down.

At the airport you could see the snowploughs driving to and fro to free the runway. While I took these pictures I heard an announcement: Because of the weather the plane from Stockholm couldn’t land, it will make another try. The second try went well and the plane rolled to the terminal.

Destination Stockholm. We sat in the plane waiting for departure. It took more than an hour until the runway was clear and the airplane de-iced. Above the clouds the sun was shining and the snow was left behind. The sunset laid beautiful colours on the cloud layers.

Stockholm. On Facebook I could read, that 20-30 cm snow already has fallen at home and that it continued snowing. Even today it might snow the whole day according to the forecast. So it might come half a meter of snow or even more to Skelleftehamn. It’s so typical, that I’m abroad, and even more typical that the winter weather will end when I return.

I will update you about the weather, even if I cannot provide you with photos.

The (almost) first snow in Skelleftehamn Nov 19 2015

That’s the street where I live. Today at half past five. The first real snow, unless you count half a millimeter of icy powder. But you see on the photo, that it’s still quite warm and yesterdays puddles didn’t freeze over yet.

I like snow – I want more. Let’s see what I can achieve today …

Another small step winterwards Nov 12 2015

Today was the first day, where the maximum temperature almost was below zero, in Skelleftehamn the maximum was +0.1 °C. Although it was below zero most of the time it drizzled and mizzled from the low-hanging clouds which made the ground really slippery.

But later, when I looked through the window round 7 o’clock I could see the road being covered with a ultra-thin layer of white. Snow or ice dust – I wasn’t sure. But even this half millimeter is enough to reflect the street lights and to lighten up street and front yard.

When I went outside I could see some scattered snowflakes falling down. I know, it’s nothing and it will melt tomorrow, but anyway – it’s the very first snow of the season in Skelleftehamn. And although it’s hardly below zero, the small boat harbour killingörviken starts to freeze over.

Another aurora Nov 9 2015

I cannot remember a year with so much Northern Lights as this year. Since August I saw them at least 20 times, if not even more often. Today the forecast was quite good and when I saw the first pale aurora at 22:30 I drove to the beach. The Northern Lights covered half the sky but were quite weak. But after a while they became stronger.

For a short time they were very strong, but I was too slow with the camera. I didn’t catch the two bright shooting stars neither, but if was beautiful to see them. As beautiful as the aurora weakening again but then flickering very fast over half of the sky – like dancing a secret dance too swift to follow. Unphotographable – you have to come, be lucky and have a look by yourself.

Click the image for a better quality – the computer-calculated preview is quite bad.

A foggy day in Skelleftehamn Nov 7 2015

Strange skies Nov 3 2015

Three days ago Aurora Alerts by Soft Serve News showed a forecast for very strong polar lights, first for last night, than for tonight.

That’s why I took camera and tripod with me when I drove to the rehearsal with the Chamber Choir. When we had finished and I left the building it was cloudy – as expected – but you could see the green light of a quite strong aurora shining through the spots were clouds were less dense.

I hoped for the sky to clear up and drove to Långhällan – a favourite place at the seaside. Unfortunately however the sky hardly cleared up and finally the clouds became even denser. Suddenly I could spot a bright red light at the horizon. Is it a strong spotlight of a ship? But why is it so red? It took a minute until I realised that it’s really the moon rising above the horizon. I cannot remember seeing the moon in such an extreme red colour – even redder than at the total lunar eclipse five weeks ago.

The next photo is a bit special. It is much more edited than I use to edit photos to show the colder green colours of the Northern lights behind the clouds and the warm, now bright orange colour of the moon. I lit the foreground with a flashlight to make it visible. Not very easy to light it evenly without overexposing it. Even here I had to edit some spots that were too bright or too dark.

There may be less clouds at 4 or 5 o’clock. Ant perhaps still polar lights. But I guess I’ll be sound asleep … .

Good morning, 3. November Nov 3 2015