Oh no!

Ceci made a comment about the weather and how wonderful the autumn colors are this time of the year. Yes, they indeed are. But I’m not a fan of autumn. Why? Winter comes next!

In fact tonight is the perfect time to begin writing about winter. It’s the first time this fall (winter?) that the temperature has dropped below zero Celsius. Or at least, it’s the first time that I’ve noticed how cold it gets at night. Soon, it will also be cold during the day. And then the snow will come.

Sometimes I feel, and I mean literally feel, that all this talk about global warming is just a talk.

Last year I attended a very interesting lecture given by a visiting professor at the university here. The guy, sorry, I don’t remember his name now, said some really interesting things about this part of Norrland. He said that we are at the very end of an ice age, and the changes we are seeing here in the north are due to the normal reaction of the land that had been covered with a thick layer of ice for several thousand years. He used the Ume river and the area around Umeå and Holmsund as an example.

Back in the olden days the river was much deeper and even sea going vessels could easily get to Umeå. This is no longer possible due to the river getting shallower and shallower each year.

He explained this phenomenon by using a mattress analogy. (Don’t worry, this is all very innocent.) When you sit or lie down, you’re pressing down on the mattress. Depending on how soft your bed is, the weight of your body compresses the mattress slightly. And then you get up. The indentation made by your weight will remain for a while and then the mattress will spring back to its original state. Well, the professor said that the same thing is happening with the area all over the Gulf of Bothnia. The ice sheet had retreated and now the ground is springing back. Of course, since northern Sweden is not exactly a mattress, we are talking about thousands of years of slow springing back here. But that’s why the Ume river is getting shallower and that’s why the whole Gulf of Bothnia will eventually disappear.

The professor tied it all very nicely with global warming, but I was so taken with the idea of being able to walk to Finland in a couple thousand years that I missed that point completely.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, winter. So, because we are at the tail end of an ice age, things are supposed to be warming up. I truly hope that this will be one of those “warm” winters. The last one wasn’t that bad. It was just long. And the one before wasn’t that bad either, except it was super-snowy. And the one before that was awful. But as far as I remember, it was awful everywhere. I went through three car batteries that year. Let’s hope that this year I can get away with only one!