The river Umeälven freezes over

I’ve been in Umeå for some days. Mostly I was inside and worked for Once Upon, my current developer project. The weather was mostly ghastly these days. It rained, partly with snow at temperatures round 1 °C on half frozen ground leaving a mixture of very slippery roads and half frozen water puddles. That’s great weather for working inside!

Today however the weather has been completely different. It’s -9 °C outside and the sun is shining. Time to leave work and go for a walk along the river Umeälven. Transparent ice floes are drifting on the surface and at the shore the river has started to freeze over. The low sun shines on the ice and let it sparkle in many colours. What a pleasure after these dark, dim and colourless days.

Sunlit ice on the Umeälven ISunlit ice on the Umeälven IIThe river Umeälven

Tomorrow I’ll return to Skelleftehamn. Hopefully the forecasted snow will come – I’m eager to test my new back country skis I bought some weeks ago.

 

Lagom winter

It’s probably not the first time, that I use the word lagom in this blog. You could translate it with “just right”. Not too hot, not too cold – not too much, not too little. That’s lagom.

Just now the winter behaves lagom, too. Om Friday evening 5 cm of snow covered my garden, tonight it’s round 20 cm. Not 76 cm as last year, not 2 mm as the year before, just 20 cm. That’s lagom! Even the temperatures are quite moderate, lying round -5 °C.

I didn’t have much time to enjoy this winter, because I’ve worked quite much the last time. Today evening however I managed at least an evening promenade through the near forest, first along some ways and paths, then across country. It was snowing a bit and everything was quite. I could hear neither bird nor car, only the scrunching of the snow under my feet. Today I went afoot but I got my back-country skis from the garage hoping for more snow to come.

“Night walk I”“Night walk II”“Night walk III”

The first cold and sunny days

It became colder the last days. Yesterday temperatures were between -10 °C and -6 °C. Today it was warmer but still below zero the whole day. Especially the night before last was cold: coldest in Nattavaara with -23.8 °C but even in Åliden, just 33 km west, temperatures lay round -17 °C the whole night.

This morning I took the car to the bridge Sundgrundsbron that leads over the river Skellefteälven and pleasured in the wonderful sunrise colours. The sky in the east was coloured of warm shades of bright orange, while the sky in the west was more blue and purple, looking much colder.

Due to the stream parts of the Skellefteälven were still open but many parts were already covered with ice. Noises of cracking and clicking echoed through the air, clearly indicating that the ice was still fresh and quite thin.

A family of mute swans paddled over the river. Did they decide to stay or will they fly south? I hope they’ll cope the cold weather in case of staying.

Skellefteälven in the dawnA family of mute swansPurple ice edge

If you look closer at the first photo you see a layer of clouds hovering above the horizon. The locals call this phenomenon “vinterväggen”, meaning “the winter wall”. It’s quite typical for this season and sometimes the whole eastern horizon is covered by a thick layer of clouds. According to a neighbour it’s this type kind of clouds that brings snow.

But according to the weather forecast tomorrow’s precipitation will come more as rain than snow.

Kayakvideo – my thing – winter kayaking in Skellefteå

Last summer I was asked by filmmaker Johan Granstrand if I would be interested in making a small film about my winter paddling. I felt honoured to be asked and gladly accepted.

Despite to this year we got a lot of snow already in the beginning of November last year. Since weather was nice (and cold) we decided to make the film on November 12, exactly one year ago.

I already blogged about this day in my post “Kayak – is it a boat or a sledge?”. Some weeks ago I got the permission to share the link to the video and that’s what I do today.

“Min Grej – Kayaking i Skellefteå på vintern” on Vimeo.

(I really like this film but I don’t like listening to me talking. My Swedish sounds awfully!)

Retrospect: a rainy autumn

Wave of leaves (taken on 11 September}

The day before yesterday a blog post on the weather page of Balderskolan caught my eye. The school Balderskolan in Skellefteå has its own weather station and has been collecting statistical data since 2002.

Here some statistics from August to October the last three years. The data is taken from the blog entry. And as you see – the last months have been very wet indeed compared to the two years before.

Number of days with rainfall

2015 2016 2017
August 7 st * 11 st 18 st
September 6 st 5 st 21 st
October 6 st 8 st 19 st
Total 19 st * 24 st 58 st

Precipitation in mm

2015 2016 2017
August 39 mm * 38 mm 59 mm
September 28 mm 18 mm 81 mm
October 4 mm 5 mm 79 mm
Total 71 mm * 61 mm 219 mm


(* data for the first seven days in August 2016 is missing)

The autumn leaves …

Most bushes and trees have realised, that summer is history and even autumn has come to an end. They all shed their leaves in the last weeks. Only the lilacs are quite stubborn and try to keep their leafage with all their might.

The cold wind gusts of the last night however did not only bring a bit of snow but also started to tear of the still green lilacs leaves. One of these leaves landed on my car hood where it slowly snowed over.

A snowed in leaf on my car hood

So lilacs beware, winter is on its way!

Wet snow and slush

It snowed the last days and it’s snowing right now in Skelleftehamn.

In Skelleftehamn it already snowed this morning but it was too warm and the snow didn’t settle.

In town it was slightly colder, but with temperatures still above zero the snow was very wet and soon became damp, slowly transforming into puddles of snow slush.

Anyway it’s still the end of October so it may take a while till the first real winter snow.

Snow tracks in Skellefteå

A first glimpse of winter

I’m sitting in the bus travelling to Skellefteå to go to work. This time I don’t travel from Skelleftehamn as usual but from Umeå where Annika and I landed yesterday evening after our one-week journey through Scotland.

While it was warm in Scotland (hardly below 10 °C, up to 17 °C) it is quite cold in Northern Sweden. Not really wintry cold, but cold enough that the lakes start to freeze over and precipitation is more snow than rain.

Snow shower on the E4 near Skellefteå

Time to change to dubbdäck – to studded tyres!

∞ Infinite rain ∞

Ok, guys, let’s face it: It always has been raining, it’s raining right now and it will never stop raining again until the end of the world!

Never ever I have expected such a rainy autumn! Since I’ve been back from the hiking tour on the Kungsleden it rained most of the days and in the spare moments without precipitation it was cloudy anyway.

Sometimes it was windstill, sometimes it was stormy, but it rained. Either as a steady rain or more like a curtain of a dense fog or sometimes as a series of cloudbursts. So my daily outfit has been almost the same for weeks: A sturdy rain parka and rubber boots.

Rubber boots became my standard shoes

Of course the sun came out little here and there but mostly just for a short time. I can count the days with much sun with the fingers of one hand. And I don’t need all fingers!

Today I looked at one of the many puddles of water. It was some centimetres deep. Some yellow leaves – probably victims of last night’s squalls – floated have under the water surface, which was rippled by the ongoing rain. And then I saw it:

The Sign Of Infinity!

∞ Infinite rain ∞

I looked at the sign and all at once I got the dreadful message: It always has been raining, it’s raining right now and it will never stop raining again until the end of the world!

Addendum (11 October)

If I understand the weather statistics of the school Balderskolan in Skellefteå correctly, we got 63mm of rain yesterday. That’s more rain than the average precipitation  in Skellefteå all October! No wonder, that some of the puddles in Bonnstan were more than 15 cm deep. Since these puddles were covered with yellow birch leaves it looked really beautiful. What a pity, that I only had my iPhone to shoot this image:

Bonnstan – Skellefteå or Venice?

 

Autumn northern light above Skelleftehamn

I have stopped counting how many northern lights I have missed in Skelleftehamn the last four weeks. The sky was covered with a thick layer of clouds most of the days (and nights). I only could see some week greenish coloration lingering through a break in the clouds for some minutes two weeks ago. The rest of the day I watched all the fantastic aurora photos made in Norway and other places, while it stayed cloudy here.

This week the weather started to be much nicer. The air however was cold and moist in the night making the nights quite foggy. While the aurora was visible in town last night, it was foggy again here. But this night I was lucky. Even though it’s colder (+ 3 °C just now) outside, the sky remained clear. When I saw the first green shade I immediately took the car (it’s faster) and drove to the near lake Snesviken where I could watch the first polar lights in Skelleftehamn this season.

Aurora above the lake Snesviken IAurora above the lake Snesviken IIAurora above the lake Snesviken III

The red colour in the left is no northern light, it’s the lights of the town Skellefteå, probably caused by the still moist air.