Winter is still only flirting with us here in the north

[kareina]

Some time back one of you (I think it was hrj) shared some of the signs of fall in her area, and asked what were the signs of fall where the rest of us are. I didn't reply, as it happened to be on a day I didn't have time, but when she asked we had already lost most of our leaves, and some nights were dipping below freezing, and then warming back up to a few degrees above during the day. In the weeks since winter has crept gradually closer, and for the past several days we have enjoyed temperatures which stay below 0 C. When I got home from Finland we had had our first snow--a cute little dusting just enough to fill much of the space between the blades of grass, but not actually hide all of it. This, of course made me happy, as I love snow.

This weekend lord_kjar and C. did the 2.5 hour drive down to Bureå to attend a party at his little brother's house, but I stayed home, as the trip to Finland was quite enough time away from home for me for one week, so instead O. and I worked on some projects. However, when they got home they told me that in Bureå there is half a meeter of snow, and now I am so jealous. Why did that cloud have to drop it all down there, why couldn't it have moved just a bit further north? Why didn't I go along (and bring snow pants) so that I could play in it. Not that I didn't enjoy being at home, of course I did, and it was nice to make progress on projects.

Comments

[silme.livejournal.com]

I miss snow. The icon is from where I lived in Colorado.

Two inches of snow freaks out the British. I kid you not. Six inches closes down the country, even Scotland. I'm usually driving around thinking the roads are fine, but the natives think that the roads are impassable. One year, about six-eight inches hit part of the M3. People abandoned their cars on the motorway -- right in the lanes where they were driving; they didn't even move to the side of the road. An SCA person, originally from Wyoming, was working for a couple of years in Portsmouth and had to drive home that night from a meeting in Northampton. He said that the drive was fine except for having to dodge around all of the abandoned cars! :)

[kareina.livejournal.com]

The year I moved to Sweden I flew into Stockholm and David, who had driven down from the north to visit family who had moved south, picked me up and we did a ten day road trip together. During that trip they got around 30 cm of fluffy snow, which meant that most of the highway traffic drove slowly in the right lane, which meant that he and I got the untracked left lane to ourselves, so we drove the speedlimit.

[silme.livejournal.com]

But 30 cm is barely a foot! I used to drive to work in more snow than that! I thought that the Swedes would be more accustomed to snow. :)

That said, I remember driving back to Stockholm from an event in western Sweden. It was snowing by the site. When we drove (hire car) to Stockholm, I did noticed that one lane was ploughed and most people stuck to it. I did pass quite a few people. :) By the time, we got to Stockholm, it was just slushy.
PS Note that I drove and not Ian, who is British. :)