Sun
20 Mar
2022

The wea­ther last week was most­ly any­thing but plea­sant, as I wro­te alre­a­dy in the pre­vious artic­le on this site. On Fri­day, a polar low pres­su­re moved across Spits­ber­gen and pro­du­ced a rather asto­nis­hing series of wea­ther chan­ges within a short peri­od of time: the rain stop­ped and ins­tead we final­ly got a bit of snow again, and the tem­pe­ra­tures drop­ped below free­zing again. Not much, but bet­ter than not­hing.

A first litt­le excur­si­on into Advent­da­len after the recent warm wea­ther spell.

That was final­ly some­thing useful.

But it was a mat­ter of a few hours until we got the next inte­res­t­ing wea­ther event in shape of a snow storm well bey­ond the ever­y­day com­bi­na­ti­on of wind and snow in the­se lati­tu­des. I don’t know what wind speed we had, but being out­side was quite chal­len­ging and to some degree actual­ly dan­ge­rous: see­ing and breathing were dif­fi­cult in this tur­bu­lent whirl of wind and snow, the storm could just blow you off your feet at times and items were blown around and could have hit you. The storm did actual­ly cau­se some minor dama­ge also to items that had been stan­ding out­side for years alre­a­dy.

Snow storm in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

But this rather inte­res­t­ing wea­ther expe­ri­ence did not last long, and alre­a­dy on Satur­day we could to some degree enjoy what most would pic­tu­re for them­sel­ves when they think about the arc­tic win­ter. But the snow con­di­ti­ons in and near Lon­gye­ar­by­en have inde­ed suf­fe­r­ed a lot during the last week’s warm tem­pe­ra­tures and rain.

May­be we get some more snow now. Fin­gers crossed

Win­ter sce­n­ery at Elve­ne­set in Sas­senfjord on Satur­day.

It has always been and remains an inte­res­t­ing phe­no­me­non that tha­wing wea­ther and snow melt always hit Lon­gye­ar­by­en and the near sur­roun­dings befo­re they make them­sel­ves felt else­whe­re. It is here that the snow melt always comes weeks befo­re it does so in other places. You can almost rely on having fine win­ter con­di­ti­ons e.g. in Sas­send­a­len when the snow has tur­ned into slush and rivers have bro­ken up in and around Lon­gye­ar­by­en. Once you have left Lon­gye­ar­by­en and lower Advent­da­len behind you, it looks like not­hing has hap­pen­ed.

Some impres­si­ons from the­se (wea­ther-wise) rather tur­bu­lent days:

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.