Sonskuif (Sunshift)

Yesterday-night, the time shifted and winter has officially arrived. Thus far we had a mild autumn, with the temperature dropping below zero only a few times in the nights. During the days the temperatures are between 5 and 12 , which is quite nice but just enough to encourage you to start getting out the hats and gloves. Especially on chilly mornings, when cycling to work, gloves and a hat prevents uncomfortable chilly fingers and ears. But the grass is still green and the trees, a beautiful mosaic of yellow and red. However, the leaves are falling quickly now and form lush carpets of yellow beneath the trees. Underneath the apple trees are rotting apples, emitting a surprisingly nice aroma. No wonder the elks are getting drunk on them (see newspaper articles here and here).

Autumn carpet. 

Note the lonely lost glove in the foreground,

this is quite a common sight nowadays again (also see older post).

We hope this will be a snowy winter again. The previous two winters (the only two winters we had in Sweden so far) were very snowy. In 2009 we even had a dusting of snow already in October (previous post). That year, however, the big snow only came around the middle of December (previous post) and then stayed with an ever increasing cover until deep into March. Last year, the snow came during a huge snow storm in early November (previous post), which also remained in covering the earth until middle March. How is it going to be this year? People say that the previous two winters had unusually heavy snowfalls and in Uppsala, the snow usually don’t stay throughout the winter, but rather fall and then melt away before falling again. We sure hope we have a lot of snow again, since we’ve grown to like the white and black landscapes of snowy Sweden.

Stay tuned for news of winter 2011-2012.

C&R