After yesterday’s snow, that mostly hissed by horizontally due to wind speeds up to 24 m/s the wind was calming down over night. To my surprise 20 additional cm of snow fell on the ground last night without having being blown away.
What a wonderful winter morning. Hardly any wind, still snowing, -7 °C and our house dressed in white velvet.
It started with a class 3 warning snowfall for Västernorrlands län, that the Swedish weather service smhi issued yesterday. Class 3 warnings are the most severe warnings in Sweden and the last class 3 warning for snowfall happened ten years ago.
Still yesterday: Let’s check the amount of snow:
Obbola, where I live: 29 cm until Wednesday. Umeå – 20 km north: 46 cm. Let’s check Västernorrland: Örnsköldsvik would get already 76 cm of snow and in Drömme, 23 km west of Örnsköldsvik: 101 cm of snow (81 on Tuesday alone)!
As a hardcore snow lover I have to admit that I’m jealous and even a bit sulky. Why, oh why do all other places get much more snow than we at home!
In my old freelancer times I would have taken a day off and travelled to Drömme. But now I’m employed with much less spare time than before. In addition to that I sold my Subaru before I started working in Tromsø¹ and Annika’s Golf has no four-wheel-drive.
Suck!
Anyhow after today’s 11 o’clock meeting I took some hours off and took Annika’s car to the inland west from Umeå, where almost 50 cm of snow where forecasted for today. It was quite a rough car tour, both because of the visibility and the road conditions. I wanted to make photos but had to realise that in such intense snow weather there is hardly any place to park the car and it was impossible to see where the road ends and where the ditch begins.
Ok. One exception – here I could stop in a small side road.
Driving was slow and soon I realised that I wouldn’t reach my destination Tavelsjö before sundown. So I gave up my plans and headed back to Umeå. Everything was white and sometimes it was hard to see where the road was although all roads where already ploughed – probably several times. When I left the E12 near Kåddis I experienced the first (and only) road that hardly was ploughed. Sometimes I had to “swim” through deep snow drifts and I’m still surprised that I made it without being helplessly stuck.
Finally I reached Umeå where probably 30–40 cm of snow had fallen. All snow ploughs, tractors and people with snow shovels were working to get rid of the snow, while I looked more for the places, where snow was left and possibly untouched.
Now I’m home again and still hear the wind and see whirling snow through my window. How much snow has fallen here is impossible to say. While the snow drifts behind the house are at least 120 cm tall, other parts round the house have been blown completely free from snow.
So – no local records – but at least it’s a real winter. Nice!
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¹ Tromsø, a yes – wasn’t I supposed to work in Tromsø? Actually yes, but due to the covid-19 restrictions in Norway I’m still home in Sweden and without any clue when I will travel to Tromsø again. I will have missed the whole seven weeks of polar night but also one of Tromsø’s warmest and rainiest winters ever.
Five days ago at Vitskärsudden, Annika’s and my favourite all-season bathing place looked like this:
Looks like bathing season would be over there soon, I thought but last night’s hard wind had crushed a lot of the sea ice along the coast. Annika and I packed our bathing things, wrapped ourselves up in warm winter clothes and headed to the beach for a winter bath.
Well, it didn’t look looked too promising, but I gave it a try. The first obstacle was the ice wall at the beach – at least half a metre high. Slowly I crossed it barefoot until with the last step the wall collapsed and I stood in the shallow water. Well, standing in water was part of the plan. Check.
Then a wave came. Not a huge one but nevertheless it covered me with sea spray from tip to toe. Brr! At the same time the wave pushed ice floes and crushed ice against my shin with more power than expected. The water was too shallow to knock me over but the sharp ice cut my shin on several places.
So I just shouted “Back!” to Annika in case of her making a try as well and instantly returned to the snowy beach to dry myself off and got dressed again. I’m glad, that I didn’t try it any longer. Probably I would have got so many cuts the I would look like a survivor of a piranha fight.
So – home again. No winter bath today.
Later I took the car to the same beach again to make some photographs. The pictures hardly transport the energy of the overlapping waves and the impression of wind and snowfall. Anyhow, here are some of the photos:
Was the action stupid? Well, perhaps. At least it wasn’t dangerous since we never planned to go into deeper water. So it’s more under to motto: “Another good idea that didn’t work!”
And suddenly, after some days with temperatures below -10 °C the Baltic Sea at our house has started to freeze over.
And suddenly even Vitskärsudden, the bay where Annika and I took a winter bath just two days ago is covered with ice, too.
#justaphoto
December was an odd month regarding the weather. It was quite warm and extremely cloudy. There was hardly any sun and when it snowed it turned into sleet and rain. But at the turn of the year the weather finally changed. We got 10–15 cm of snow before New Year’s Eve, a short warmer period and then finally permanent frost. Right now, at the morning of 3 January the thermometer shows -12 °C.
Yesterday Annika and I made a short excursion to Strömbäck-Kont by the sea, where we took a promenade by the mostly open sea. It is 4 km linear distance to Strömbäck-Kont, but 30 km by car due to a long bay that separates the island Obbolaön where we live from the mainland in the west.
Some photos from our tour. The first 5 are made at Strömback-Kont, the other three in Degernäs on the way back.
Yesterday I enjoyed my lunch break that included a promenade through fresh snow and a winter bath. Today it has got warm again and the snow has started melting away. What a pity!
If the landscape is dull and grey – photograph in black and white!
It seems, that the shallow bay outside of our house is nameless. I cannot find any name in the maps of Lantmäteriet, OpenStreetMap, Eniro or Google. So I decided to give the bay a name today. From now on its name is “Grundviken” (shallow bay), at least in this blog.
After one millimetre of snowfall and waves crushing the thin ice on Grundviken it looked like this today. I shot the first photo at 9:30 and the second at 13:35.
The next wintry photos of Grundviken may take some time, since warmer temperatures and rain are forecasted for the rest of the week.
It was fresh in Obbola this morning. Blue sky and -6 °C. Time to take a break from my work and make some photos.
I went to a place with a better view on the sunrise at 8:41. I had however to wait a while because there was a layer of grey clouds above the horizon. Some locals in Skelleftehamn use to call this cloud layer vinterväggen – the winter wall – since it is quite dense like a wall and typical for the beginning of winter. But that’s not a common term.
So I had some spare time for crouching and taking this photo of the ice covered plant standing in the water – a reminiscence to the high water level the last days.
And then the sun finally rose above the vinterväggen and everything was illuminated in warm shades.
In the lunch break I took the car to “Obbola town” to have a pizza for lunch. Parts of the mouth of the river Umeälven were already covered with ice.
Sunset today was 14:11 but I was in online meetings from 13 to 15, so no sunset photos for today.
Why I write about this? Because without the Corona restrictions I would have worked in Tromsø today. And in Tromsø I wouldn’t have seen a sunrise. And neither for the rest of the year. That’s what the Norwegian weather service yr shows for Tromsø today:
Sun and moon, 27. Nov 2020 | Sun: ut is polar night, the sun does not rise.
So today is the first day of the period of polar night that will last until 14. January. Maybe I’ll be able to work in the office in Tromsø right after New Year. Then I’ll experience the polar night there. For the first time in my life.