Wednesday 21 February 2007

Pic of the day: In anime and manga, snow storms are usually seen as an opportunity for the young people to huddle close together without adult supervision. In real life, less so. Still, I guess it doesn't hurt to be prepared... (Screnshot from anime Final Approach.)

The blizzard hits

Even this far south in Norway, we are quite familiar with snow. (After all, we are still about as far north as southern Alaska.) We also have some storms (though not tornadoes, thank the Light!). But blizzards ... blizzards are rare. There is of course a reason for this: Norway makes up the west coast of the Scandinavian peninsula, and the prevailing winds are from the west all year long. This means that the storm centers that reach us have formed over the ocean, the same ocean where the Gulf Stream runs. So the storms tend to be wet but not cold. But today was an exception. Very much so.

We had been warned that an area of high pressure to the north would direct a stream of "Siberian" arctic air down from the east, from Russia. This happens from time to time, but it is cold and dry air, and it doesn't move particularly fast, since high pressures are leisurely things compared to the low pressures. I'll not get into the physics, but this is how it usually is. What happened this time, however, seems to be that an approaching low pressure came in just so and sucked the cold air at high speed in through the wetter, milder air. Snow at high speed started to fill the air, stinging almost like a hundred small needles at any exposed skin.

By the time I left work, it was easily the worst blizzard I could remember as an adult. Probably the worst I've been in at all. There was a pretty scary one when I was a school child, but it probably impressed me mostly because I was small. I doubt my parents, or even my older brothers, would have let me walk home from school alone if there was any real danger. This time, the radio is telling parents in the neighboring province to keep their children home from school. This takes a lot in Norway; as I said, we are used to snow. But not snow like this. It swirls everywhere, and quickly build up dunes in the road some places, so you can't get through until the snow plow has been there. And then it fills up again. Already this first evening some of the snow drifts were probably taller than small school children.

I felt a savage glee as I made my way through the snow drifts from work to the bus station. I could virtually feel the calories being sucked out of me, of course, but there was also the primal joy of a worthy challenge. Nature was challenging me, but not at unreasonable odds. This was true enough, but it turned out nature had a little more in store for me than the ten minutes against the snow-storm to reach the bus terminal. The bus, as it turned out, was not going anytime soon. I went back to the office and returned an hour later, only to learn after considerable waiting that the traffic was blocked between there an my home. (A lorry accident.) Luckily there goes a train in the evening, a little more than two and a half hour later than my usual bus. There was just enough room on that, and it even stops much closer to home than does the bus. (I don't normally use the train as it has much fewer departures. Otherwise I love trains.) So I came home at last, only two and a half hour late.

Others were not quite as lucky. The main road between the south coast provinces – our interstate, so to speak – was blocked by snow drifts and lorries without snow chains (foreigners, no doubt). Once the plows could not get to through, the snow quickly built up, and people settled in for a long and chilly night. The cars that contained young couples probably had no problems keeping warm. For the rest, which was mostly people on their way home from work, it would become a less than pleasant experience. Only a ways into the next day would they get out of the snow drifts. But at least no one died directly from the blizzard. This is Norway, after all.

Blizzard continues tomorrow.