Tuesday, January 19, 2016

That when brought into vision become an inferno

On December 29th at Oittaa there were artificial snow machines making big noise, sucking water from lake Bodom and making piles of snow, to be used for cross-country skiing tracks. It was cold, and there was plenty of frost covering the landscape.

Today I commuted by bicycle. It was -13 °C, and the conditions were good, even though the road was a bit bumpy. The commute takes 55-65 minutes in one direction, so I'm getting two hours of exercise.

I tried today the new Alpina K9 boots, and they fit just right, even though I bought them one size larger than usually. They were on sale as "hunting boots", but as I'm not into hunting, I think they are good also for walking with a camera. Coincidentally I'm currently reading The Hallowed Hunt, a novel by Lois McMaster Bujold.

(Posting title is from the poem The Mystery of the Hunt by Michael McClure.)

2 comments:

Cedric said...

Is the lack of snow unusual for this time of year Juha? I assume there is no snow because it is too cold but I was wondering if that was "normal".

Juha Haataja said...

Recently it has been more usual that there is no snow at the end of the year, but historically I guess it is only something like 1/3 of the years that it has been so. December was very warm, but January has been quite cold, and now we have 21 cm of snow.

The Helsinki region is rather sensitive to weather conditions, especially regarding wind direction. When the cold arrives from east or from north, they may be little moisture and thus no snow. But when the wind direction is from the south, over the Gulf of Finland, then there can be rather heavy snowfall near the coast.