it looks like late April out there, is it really only mid March?
As anyone who actually reads my journal is already aware, it has been a very strange winter here in Luleå. While we did have some nice, below freezing temperatures, and it did snow every so often, pretty much every time it snowed within one to three days thereafter it warmed up to above freezing +/- a bit of rain, and the walkways and streets became icy and slippery. As a result, every next time it snowed we were careful to leave a bit of snow on the walkways (when there was enough snow to bother shoveling at all) because the snow isn't slippery to walk upon (until it warms up enough, again, to melt it). However, if "winter" this year is defined as that period of time when the temperatures were often below zero for 1 to 15 days, followed by 2 to 7 days of temperatures a little above zero, followed by 1 to 15 days of below zero, repeat..., then winter has been over for a couple of weeks now, and we are well into "spring", by which I mean temps ranging from -1 to +8. Never mind that "spring" started well more than a month earlier than it usually does.
The deep puddles on the roads that happened at the beginning of this long warm spell are mostly gone and the pavement has dried, but the snow in the yards and fields is still present in large patches. Our side yard which has a fair few trees growing in it and native vegetation ground cover instead of grass has lost all of its snow (since not so much made it to the ground with the trees there to collect some in their branches), but our front yard/field still has a good bit of icy stuff that started out as snow. However, very near the house the melting has been much faster, and there is bare dirt (literally--that area was the part we did landscaping on last autumn, and no grass had time to grow in before winter started). However, the walkway itself is only slowly becoming exposed, and then only with lots of help. It turns out that the layers of "little bit of snow" we had been leaving on the walkway have condensed into a single layer of dense ice that is 10 to 15 cm thick.
Since this week has been mostly 6 to 8 C above freezing I have made a bit of time each day to chop some of that ice away, and now have exposed about half of the walkway itself. I am hoping I can get all of it chopped clear before the week is over, and that the ground along it starts to thaw quickly, since it would be nice to finish setting in the cobblestones around the cement blocks that make up the center of the walkway. While I would have preferred to have had a real winter, since we didn't I am hoping that it means that I can get an early start on summer projects, and the walkway will be a good thing to work on while we wait for enough thawing over in the earth cellar area to resume that project.
Speaking of projects--we have managed to rip out half of the floor in the basement room that has mold issues. Last night. Starting after choir. Doesn't everyone start major projects at 21:00 when one needs to be out the door at 07:00 the next morning? Here's hoping we can find time to get the rest of it out of there soon, so that we can scrub away the mold, patch the holes in the concrete floor where they bolted the supporting floor boards down, re-paint the floor, and finally move the stuff back into the room. I am going to like the new, higher, ceiling. Not that it will be very high. With the raised floor I can reach my knuckles to the ceiling without standing on my toes, without it I can only reach my finger tips to the ceiling without standing on my toes.
In other news, the GIS class I have been sitting in on had an exam today--a delightfully easy one in my opinion. We needed to explain about how and why tables are linked in a GIS project (with a sketch), explain about cylindrical map projections, explain why a polar orbit for satellites is useful for GIS purposes, and two other easy questions I seem to have forgotten. Now I just need to make time to finish up the last two labs for that course and it will be done.
The deep puddles on the roads that happened at the beginning of this long warm spell are mostly gone and the pavement has dried, but the snow in the yards and fields is still present in large patches. Our side yard which has a fair few trees growing in it and native vegetation ground cover instead of grass has lost all of its snow (since not so much made it to the ground with the trees there to collect some in their branches), but our front yard/field still has a good bit of icy stuff that started out as snow. However, very near the house the melting has been much faster, and there is bare dirt (literally--that area was the part we did landscaping on last autumn, and no grass had time to grow in before winter started). However, the walkway itself is only slowly becoming exposed, and then only with lots of help. It turns out that the layers of "little bit of snow" we had been leaving on the walkway have condensed into a single layer of dense ice that is 10 to 15 cm thick.
Since this week has been mostly 6 to 8 C above freezing I have made a bit of time each day to chop some of that ice away, and now have exposed about half of the walkway itself. I am hoping I can get all of it chopped clear before the week is over, and that the ground along it starts to thaw quickly, since it would be nice to finish setting in the cobblestones around the cement blocks that make up the center of the walkway. While I would have preferred to have had a real winter, since we didn't I am hoping that it means that I can get an early start on summer projects, and the walkway will be a good thing to work on while we wait for enough thawing over in the earth cellar area to resume that project.
Speaking of projects--we have managed to rip out half of the floor in the basement room that has mold issues. Last night. Starting after choir. Doesn't everyone start major projects at 21:00 when one needs to be out the door at 07:00 the next morning? Here's hoping we can find time to get the rest of it out of there soon, so that we can scrub away the mold, patch the holes in the concrete floor where they bolted the supporting floor boards down, re-paint the floor, and finally move the stuff back into the room. I am going to like the new, higher, ceiling. Not that it will be very high. With the raised floor I can reach my knuckles to the ceiling without standing on my toes, without it I can only reach my finger tips to the ceiling without standing on my toes.
In other news, the GIS class I have been sitting in on had an exam today--a delightfully easy one in my opinion. We needed to explain about how and why tables are linked in a GIS project (with a sketch), explain about cylindrical map projections, explain why a polar orbit for satellites is useful for GIS purposes, and two other easy questions I seem to have forgotten. Now I just need to make time to finish up the last two labs for that course and it will be done.