Saturday 25 November 2006

Pic of the day: Those used to be fields, now a home for beautiful swimming birds.

Rain, rain...

The warmest, wettest November ever measured in Norway. That is how the media will sum up this month in a few days. (I know, because I write this in a few days.) In fact, it will continue for a few more days. If not for my daily journal, I would not have known that the weather was much like this 6 years ago too. Just not quite that much. It is not a little wetter and warmer each year, it varies from year to year, but now and again there is a small breaking of the records. This year was one of those again.

Not that I complain. Through years of vigorous consumption, we have taken more water out of our hydroelectric dams than God has put in, and the water level was getting disturbingly low. The last couple of years we had pretty high prices during the winter, which is when people here use the most electricity. We use it for heating here, and not for air conditioning. Well, at least we didn't until this summer, which was freakishly hot, at least here on the south coast. This winter looks like it will be much cheaper, since the crisis is over for this time.

There hasn't been any disastrous flooding this time, but the local rivers here have been pretty swollen for some time now. I joked that the local farmers must put the sheep up on the roof. It is not quite that bad, it is probably enough to keep them indoors in the barn. But the fields are better suited for rowboats than tractors, and the days pass in this way and become weeks.

Of course, the winter lasted longer this year than it had for a while, so it is not all greenhouse.