Slush forecasted

Snowstorm, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Apparently the half-meter snow cover we now have here in Finland may not last long, as warmer weather is expected after Wednesday. But we will have a lot of slush.

The photo here was taken on Sunday, using vertical panning and flash to get some motion blur to the trees and to highlight the closer snow flakes.

Speaking of different types of snow, it is sometimes said that the Inuit language (and to a lesser degree, Finnish) has bigger variety of words for snow than English. But that may be just an illusion - probably those English-speaking who live enough up north can discuss snow as fluently as any other Northern tribe.

However that is, here is a short list of snow words in Finnish (from Finnish Wikipedia): sohjo, räntä, loska, söltsy, iljanne, ajolumi, puuteri, tykkylumi, viti, nattura, utukka, höykkälumi, nuoska, suojalumi, suvilumi, rääpäkkä, mätälumi, takkala, huove, kinos, nietos, kohva, hanki, hankiainen, huurre, härmä, kuura, siide , riite, riide, riitta, riitto, kerte, kohma, hyyde, tykkilumi, vuotos, hyöty, hitva, hile, hiutale, kuurankukka, aito, tiera, tilsa, paakku.

Interestingly, the most common word for snow in Finnish, lumi, is also a first name in France.

Update: Apparently reporting on the snow storm of yesterday is a bit lagging. Now it was reported that the amount of snow and the force of the wind we had is nearly a record. Getting 30 cm of snow in one day and land winds of up to 21 m/s is quite impressive. As if we didn't realize that yesterday.