It’s summer

When you look out of your window and see long green grass in the urgent need of being cut, where 4 weeks ago a snow shower covered the whole garden with white …

When you go along the river Skellefteälven and finally other flowers started to bloom than only tussilago …

When nights are no dark nights any longer and it will take many weeks until you can see the first stars again …

When you paddle on the river Skellefteälven, barefoot, just with t-shirt and shorts, not with a drysuit as three weeks ago and you even enjoy becoming wet by some breaking waves, because it’s so refreshing …

… then it’s summer in Northern Sweden.

Annika paddling on the SkellefteälvenRiverside dandelions

And summer is more than welcome after the long winter. By the way, summer solstice is just 10 days away.

Sundew

Finally all the snow and ice is gone, even in the shadows of the forests and on the cold bogs. Only in the Mountains of the North the winter is still visible (123 cm in Katterjåkk yesterday) and sensible (-9.2 °C in Tarfala some days ago.)

Here however the days are warm and mostly sunny. Today I visited a bog after work and as I expected, many, many thousands of sundews grew on the wet patches and the dark mud. I always was fascinated of these carnivorous plants. In Germany they are seldom and under conservation whereas in Sweden they seem to grow everywhere, where the ground is wet and boggy. And that’s a lot of places.

Sundew

Back from the tropics

The little hotel room was damp and hot. It was located directly under the sunlit roof and hadn’t cooled down next morning although I kept the window open the whole night. I could hear the parrots screech and saw them flying around looking for peanuts.

I’m not used to tropical warmth and was very thirsty. The water from the cold water tap was almost hot and it took a long while until it cooled down a bit. Well, perhaps you shouldn’t be too demanding and picky if you travel that far south …

… to Amsterdam.

Wait a moment – Amsterdam? Tropical heat? Parrots?

Yes! No! Yes!

I travelled to Amsterdam with the Skellefteå Chamber Choir for some days. It had been quite cold in Skellefteå on the day of departure and we had experienced some hailstorms. When we landed in Amsterdam some hours later  it was more than 20 °C and probably almost 30 °C in my hotel room. That’s of course far away from being tropical but still so warm, that it tired me.

The first parrots flying outside surprised me. That’s nothing I connect with the Netherlands. Later I learned that there are many Rose-ringed parakeets in the park Vondelpark nearby and according to amsterdamiam.com there live more than 3000 of them in Amsterdam and more than 10000 in the whole of the Netherlands. Those tropical birds and the hotness (at least compared to Northern Sweden …) gave me quite southern impressions.

However every time when I left the hotel I soon realised, that I’m in Amsterdam, not in the tropics.

Amsterdam IIamsterdam-2Amsterdam IIITwo rose-ringed parakeets

When I lived in Essen, Germany, Amsterdam was quite nearby. I’ve been there quite a lot and could even imagine living in Amsterdam.

I left Essen 13 years ago and nowadays towns like Amsterdam have become too big and stressful for me. Too many houses, too little place, two many people, too little calmness, way too many cyclists and also too many tourists (including me!). Living in Skelleftehamn has changed me and nowadays I probably would have difficulties to live in towns as big as Amsterdam.

I guess I’ve become bound to the north over the years. I’m completely content with that. There’s a reason that I called this blog “Way up north”.

Eleven o’clock in the evening. It’s 6 °C outside and it has been raining for hours. I can see the rain, because it’s not dark at all and it won’t become dark before late August. I should go the bed and sleep since I have to work tomorrow but I just want to have another look through the window. I love to live in the north.

From winter to summer in seven days.

I hardly can remember the intense snow fall a week ago, when I look at a day as today.

The birches come into leaf

Today in a nutshell: sun, shorts, temperatures between 15° and 22° C, sandals, blue sky, t-shirt only, ice cream.

It looked like early spring with only some of the birches starting to come into leaf but it felt more like high summer with today’s temperatures.

Annika and I have been in the “Arboretum Norr” today, just five days later as last year. Last year we could see many different species of flowers, this year only some, mostly Tussilago and Alpine Penny-cress, the two flowers that use to bloom first in the season. No wonder, April and May has been colder than last year. But today warmth attracted many butterflies, such as this European peacock.

European peacock (Aglais io)

And Tussilago is a beautiful flower anyway.

Tussilago

Wonderful rain

Yesterday it started to rain, just when I entered the car to drive to Umeå. It drizzled and the road started to get wet. On my way the rain increased and became more and more intense.

Rain on the E4 to Umeå

Between Lövånger und Sikeå it just poured down and my windscreen wipers had hard work to do.

You may wonder why I write a blog article about rain and show a really poor photo. When you come from counties such as Germany or the UK you’re probable used to rain.

Me too, but I can hardly remember when the last rain happened here. The whole April and the first half of May were so cold that almost all precipitation came as snow, not rain.

Sometimes we had got a warmer day with sun now and then – one day I saw even the first butterfly of the season – but the Swedish weather forecast predicted cold snowy weather again and quite often they were right.

And so we got snow in Skelleftehamn 6 days ago, or 9 days ago, or 12 days ago, or 27 days ago, or 34 days ago, or many other days in between, where I either had been away or just didn’t want to blog about off-season snow falls again.

That’s why I was so glad about yesterday’s and last night’s intense rain falls. They seems to end a period of an “eternal almost-winter” and hopefully will have started a period of warm spring. And one day – so it is told by the old legends – even the bleak trees may start to come into leaf and the world will become green again.

 

103rd February

Today morning was the 103rd February. It has been so cold and snowy the night and morning that I refused to call it 14th May.

Some random photos, taken between 6 and 7 o’clock where temperatures had started being above zero again:

Snowy roofSnow showers over the island BredskärLakeside of RudtjärnenGåsören in the distance, half hidden in the snow

It took the sun some time to melt away the late snow, but this evening most of the snow was gone and I was content to call today’s date 14th May again.

The snow is (mostly) gone

Winter is finally gone. Winter is gone? Well, if you’ll look at the photos below you see that most of the lake Rudtjärnen is still covered with ice and that due to the cold temperatures this evening even the open parts starts to freeze over again.

Old ice on the lake RudtjärnenNew ice on the lake Rudtjärnen

But hey, that’s part of Spring, too. So I just say: winter is finally gone! Am I right? We’ll see …

 

Well, Spring, we’re waiting …

Snow on May 13, 20:49Snow on May 13, 22:11

Another snow shower in Skelleftehamn. On 102nd February 13th May! Winter is stubborn this year.

One and a half hours later … still snowing …

Snow on May 13, 23:33

Next morning: In the night it was snowing strongly and the temperature was round 0°C. At 5 o’clock 8 cm of snow covered the car, the roof and the grass in the garden. But it already had been starting to get warmer and the snow had started to melt. That’s the ugly side of snow weather. I guess in the afternoon the snow will have melted away completely.

And then, Spring? It’s your turn. Show, what you can!

Late spring snow

When I came back from Germany on Sunday it snowed. On Monday and Tuesday some snow fell, too. And so it did today. In the morning a snow shower arrived that was so severe, that everything was white again after a short time. It was quite unbelievable that we have the 10th of May!

Winter in the midst of May

Anyway just like the last days today’s snow melted away quite soon and two hours later it was gone. Hardly believable that this short winter-intermezzo had taken place today.

But the conditions here are nothing compared to other places:

  • In Katterjåkk in the Swedish mountains there’s still 183 cm of snow.
  • On the mountain Mannen (1294 m) in Rauma, Norway it’s almost twice as much: 359 cm!
  • The German mountain Zugspitze (m) tops it with 410 cm today!
  • Oh yes – I almost forget – Fonna near Jondal in Norway is a sure bet for snow. 500 cm at 1200m, 800 cm at 1450 m!

So, compared to other places we already have Spring in Skelleftehamn despite of the snow showers and the low temperatures. Let’s see how it will be in six weeks. That’s midsummer!