Totally Tropical

Damae just looked out of the window and noticed that the trees had lost the fresh layer of snow on them. Maybe it has warmed up out there? I checked the temperature on the kitchen window thermometer.

In less that 24 hours the temperature has jumped by 20’c to around +2’c.

Totally Tropical.

Please can we have our snow back?

Nice practical joke but now can we have our snow back? After all you guys in Northern Europe and especially the UK don’t really know what to do with lots of that nice white stuff. Plus it melts after a couple of days while we can keep it looking white and snow like for weeks.

So please?

Yes you guessed it, only a centimetre or so of snow fell last night. So no skiing this weekend.

If you are wondering why our weather is back to front, it isæ apparently due to the phenomenon known as the “North Atlantic Oscillation” which controls the general weather patterns in this part of the world.

Here is the Norwegian language article I found about the NAO, and here in Googaleze-Norglish.

Have snow – will ski

In the last couple of weeks, whilst the UK and much of northern Europe has been groaning under heaps of snow, we’ve had a distinct lack of the white stuff. The old snow from three weeks ago is still here mind you, albeit a bit mucky in places. Although there was not enough of it to be able to ski any significant distance.

This has been a bit annoying, seeing as a couple of weeks ago (whilst Mama was visiting) we bought ourselves some nice new skis at the G-sport in Ål. We had to content ourselves with learning how to prepare and wax our new skis. Damae’s college Per-Lie was happy to show us how to do this and we spend a couple of hours in the GUS workshop melting, smearing and scraping off layers of wax.

But despite the prayer groups praying for snow and all our preparations, no snow appeared.

However, tonight, after a quiet evening in I looked out of the window and noticed that I could no longer see Sunnlii on the other side of the valley. I grabbed the camera to check.

Finally we have some snow and maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to get out on our skis this weekend.