Wintry day trip to Vindeln Nov 1 2017

C. and O., my best friends from Munich have been visiting me for some days. Today we made a car trip to Vindeln via Burträsk.

Contrary to the weather forecast the sun was shining, when we started. Right after Örviken, hardly 7 km from home I had to stop the car to look at the bay Ytterviksfjärden. Larger parts had frozen over under the last two days and were covered with a thin layer of fresh snow. The first sunny “winter photo” of the season!

The road between Falmark and Hjoggböle – hometown of Per Olov Enquist – was snow covered and hardly any other car appeared. Mist lay on the snowy ground, illuminated by the sun in warm yellow and orange. The whole scenery looked extremely beautiful and a bit fantastical. I was really glad to share this special mood with my friends instead of a cold November rain.

When we approached Burträsk clouds had started to cover the sky and the sun was hidden. It was so foggy, that the lake Burträsket hardly could be seen. We continued without stopping and arrived in Vindeln round 11 o’clock. While O. vas visiting a business acquaintance, C. and I made a long promenade along the river Vindelälven. It was grey in Vindeln and sometimes it snowed a bit. So the scenery was wintry as well but completely different from the colourful hazy atmosphere some hours ago.

Freezing over Oct 31 2017

One cold night and the big lake Snesviken starts to freeze over. Even the sheltered bay between mainland and the near island Storgrundet is partly covered with a very thin layer of new ice.

Freezing over – Baltic Sea at Storgrundet

This ice however won’t last long. Either it will melt when days get warmer again or the next wind will break it apart.

The autumn leaves … Oct 29 2017

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.

So lilacs beware, winter is on its way!

Wet snow and slush Oct 26 2017

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.

A first glimpse of winter Oct 23 2017

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.

Time to change to dubbdäck – to studded tyres!

∞ Infinite rain ∞ Oct 10 2017

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.

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!

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:

Autumn northern light above Skelleftehamn Sep 28 2017

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.

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.

Autumn in Skelleftehamn Sep 27 2017

Autumnal colours, blue sky and afternoon sun – this is the golden aspect of autumn. Time to wade into the shallow waters of the river Skellefteälven and make some autumn pictures.

One week after autumnal equinox the sun sets at 18:18 but days get shorter soon. In my dreams the first snow had already fallen. This may turn into reality in some weeks.

Ships and boats in Skelleftehamn Sep 23 2017

Today I planned to make some autumnal pictures in the early evening. I took the car to the small boat harbour tjuvkistan in Skelleftehamn. It felt like ages ago that I had been there. On the way there I saw a ship anchored in the commercial port. I stopped and to my surprise it was a ship from my hometown: The “Seabass” from Bremen. Of course I had to take a picture:

I went on to tjuvkistan and took some photos with trees (and boat navigation lights) reflecting in the sea. Still many boats lay in the small harbour or were on the way from or to the islands, but soon most boat people will set their boats on land before the weather gets too cold.

Hopefully I will have some other opportunities to make more pictures as long the leaves have not fallen down.