The Quiet Picture

The day dawned foggy and drizzly, but all the weather forecasts I checked said it would get better. Rather optimistically, I trusted them and set out to the Kvarnsjön lake, which is an easy 3.5 km hike from home. Only problem was that it started raining shortly after I set out, and by the time I was at the lake it was pouring. And also rather optimistically, I had opted not to wear any waterproof trousers (my jacket is (almost) waterproof). But it’s not all bad, after a while you get wet enough to stop caring if you get any more wet.

I made some lame attempts at photography, the Stormjacket was protecting the camera anyway but my enthusiasm was rapidly waning in correlation with the wet and cold creeping up on me. When I got home, I was still freezing after dry clothes, a bowl of hot soup and a cup of tea.

There’s no bad weather, there’s only bad judgement for not wearing bad weather clothes.

Nothing special to report about September… not a lot of rain though. My barometer broke on the 9th and I haven’t bothered to replace it yet (I’m not getting much out of the barometer data anyway, I’m really only interested in the temperatures and precipitation), and then I had a week’s holiday so 6 days of observations are missing overall.

* * *

Temperature (High): 14°C
Temperature (Low): 5°C
Temperature (Average): 9°C

Barometer (High): 1009 mbar
Barometer (Low): 984 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 998 mbar

Total of sunny days: 3

Rain: 30 mm
Days with rain: 8

* * *

2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008

In the previous post I claimed that our lakes are too small to create any real wave action to allow smoothing out the water with long exposures. Well, sometimes it pays to challenge the conclusions I jump into without having any real facts at hand, so today I headed to one of my favourite locations (or as I decided after I came back, the favourite location) while the wind was blowing at its best. I was right on the money about the one second shutter speed though, but I was able to go slower by overexposing to the point of blowing out the highlights and trusting Lightroom to recover them for me (which it did).

So, the discovery I made about the waves is that size doesn’t matter. All you need is a long enough shutter speed to smooth out whatever kind of waves are going about. But today’s exercise wasn’t really about the waves though, because I was more interested to see if I could get the reeds - or grass - to blur out. So all I needed was some fixed point (a rock will do nicely) and then a lot of grass. And would you know - it worked! Lesson learned, I only wish I had tried this before.

I mentioned that this place is now my #1 favourite. It’s good for flowers and landscape and works in any kind of weather, and today I found out that if I had the patience and/or inclination, I could even try wildlife photography there. I saw something in the water, it could swim and dive and it wasn’t a bird. Could I be so lucky that it was an otter? Or maybe a beaver. Or maybe it was something smaller, it was too quick to make it out properly. In any case, it didn’t make this place look any worse in my eyes!

After a cool July, we were all hoping that August would turn out warm. Well, it didn’t. We didn’t even hit 20°C any day. On the bright side, we don’t have any problems with drought…

* * *

Temperature (High): 18°C
Temperature (Low): 9°C
Temperature (Average): 13°C

Barometer (High): 1015 mbar
Barometer (Low): 988 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1001 mbar

Total of sunny days: 0

Rain: 130 mm
Days with rain: 17

* * *

2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008

It was a rather disappointing July actually, just marginally better than last year. Only the last week of July was really warm (warmest I saw was 32°C in the shade), otherwise it was rather cool with showers on many days. All in all, July was kind of like June inversed (June started warm but finished cool).

NB: Observations missing for 4 days. And as it happens, those missing days were some of the warmer days in between the cooler ones in early July.

* * *

Temperature (High): 26°C
Temperature (Low): 9°C
Temperature (Average): 18°C

Barometer (High): 1020 mbar
Barometer (Low): 994 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1006 mbar

Total of sunny days: 1

Rain: 64 mm
Days with rain: 15

* * *

2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008

I had planned to drive out to photograph the sunset, but a small thunder front moved in and had me stay at home. The weather was very local though, a raincloud above my house but clear skies in front. This created the unusual phenomenon of a rainbow on blue sky, so I hurried around with the camera to find an angle where there wouldn’t be a streetlight or a chimney sticking out at the bottom of the frame.

When the raincloud had passed, I gave up my plan A and went for the nettle-leaved bellflowers instead. I’ve missed them in their bloom every year so far, but this summer I was determined to catch them and I knew they had just started to open. I figured it’s easier to catch a sunset than this nettle-leaved-bellflowers-after-the-rain-in-evening-light opportunity, so I had to make the most of it!

June started with a real heatwave that lasted for a week. Then it cooled down, and stayed that way pretty much the month out. At least we got some rain.

NB: Observations missing for 7 days.

* * *

Temperature (High): 25°C
Temperature (Low): 6°C
Temperature (Average): 16°C

Barometer (High): 1018 mbar
Barometer (Low): 990 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1005 mbar

Total of sunny days: 4

Rain: 62 mm
Days with rain: 14

* * *

2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008

May had everything. Snowfall and summer heat! It started out fairly typically with the kind of temperatures you would expect, then on the 10 of May we got over 20°C and it looked like summer was early. Not so - it started snowing on the 14th and kept falling on and off until the 18th. The highest the snow cover we ever got was 15 cm on the morning of the 16th and despite the continuous snowfall, the temperature was just above freezing so the snow mostly just melted off faster than it fell down. Thus it was gone after only two days. As if to compensate for this back winter, the temperatures soared up during the last week of May so the month finished off with some real summer heat.

Some other notable dates:

• 6th: the Dåasen lake completely free of ice
• 9th: first blueberry flowers, lily of the valley buds, mouse ears on birches
• 10th: the big pile of snow behind my house is gone
• 14th: first rainbow of the year
• 16th: the snow meter reaches 15 cm in the morning
• 24th: all snow (including the new pile behind the house) is gone

* * *

Temperature (High): 24°C
Temperature (Low): -1°C
Temperature (Average): 11°C

Barometer (High): 1024 mbar
Barometer (Low): 1004 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1015 mbar

Total of sunny days: 4

Snow cover (High): 11 cm
Snow cover (Low): 0 cm
Snow cover (Avg): 1 cm
New snow: 11 cm*
Days with snowfall: 5

Rain: 33 mm
Days with rain: 9

* That’s the official measurement in the evening. We got a lot more snow than that, but since it melted off quickly it didn’t register in the meter.

* * *

2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008

I have vacation next week. I had planned to photograph flowers and ride my motorbike. All things considered, maybe I’ll go skiing instead.

We had 15 cm of snow in the morning. It’s still snowing.

Coincidentally, it’s 3 years ago to the date when we last had snow in May. The difference is that back then it didn’t snow in Ljusdal - today it was white all the way.

SMHIs artikel om majsnö

I have now updated all of the image galleries on minnak.net. Welcome for a visit!

* * *

Now that I have set up the galleries for easy updates, all I need is some new images! Problem is… just when the flower season is starting, the snow came back. I took a look at the lily of the valley buds behind my house, and they were looking very sad indeed. So no white flowers yet, but a white lawn instead. And it just keeps on falling.