March weather

We've had a good month. It's been getting warmer steadily, and we had a bit of rain as well. This is exactly what we want for March!

April will be the last month without us in residence. We will at last arrive at the house for the whole summer on May 1st!

Sooz and I are meeting with the tax authorities in a couple of weeks to set up our residency. It should be a straightforward process, but we shall see. Stay tuned for updates on this subject!

February's weather

It was very slowly warming in February. We are looking forward to a surge in warmth in March!

The wind gauge isn't working, I believe it's a casualty of the huge storm we suffered in January. I also don't believe the rain gauge is completely accurate, either. I've seen a few days of snow lately, which isn't being measured fully. We can use all of the precipitation we can get!

January's weather

Most of the month was pretty close to freezing. My rain gauge doesn't measure snow very well, so it's under-reporting precipitation. The wind gauge ran out of battery unexpectedly mid-month so we'll be without those measurements until we get there in the spring.

It's nice and toasty inside though!!

Report from Aspö

I'm back in London after a quick trip to our house. It's always odd to go to Aspö in the off season. Everything is so quiet and dark. Only five people (plus two dogs and a cat) were on our huge icebreaking boat out to the island.

There were a number of big trees down all over the path. Every tree fell over with a big plug of turf. Because of the topography of the island, trees grew on soil only a foot or two deep on top of solid rock. When the winds came, there were no deep roots to hold onto.

Claes told me that the storm winds were northerly, which was uncommon. This may explain why so many trees were lost, as they were pushed from an unusual direction. Sooz also has the theory of the summer's drought weakening the trees, which makes sense to me.

The island community is banding together tomorrow to clear the path. There will need to be a lot of hands to move the biggest trees.

I will certainly need help to take care of my two trees, they are larger than my saws and skills can handle. It will be Olle to the rescue in the spring! at least I have a project to keep me busy in May.

Most importantly, though, (besides the fact that nobody was hurt), our house and everything on the property are all just fine. That's a big relief.

I have made a photo gallery of my visit with lots of photos of the biggest tree damage.

More to come!

LOTS going on!

I was going to start the new year with a post about my retirement, and our plans to move from London and become full summer residents on Aspö.

However that post will have to wait, because a giant storm roared through the archipelago on New Year's Eve, causing serious damage and power outages lasting nearly a week.

We found out from our neighbours Raymond and Eva (who are resident year-round) that two trees had fallen near our house, and they sent along these two photos:

The good news is that our house isn't damaged; both trees fell away from the house, which is a blessing. The bad news is these were the two lovely pines close to our deck, which provided a great deal of beauty and shade. It's a real loss.

Here's the before and after. The house is looking quite exposed right now.

Annika and Olle came by today and surveyed the damage. Thankfully their house was spared as well. There are a number of smaller trees down around us, and plenty of them down all around the island. We have a big clean up ahead of us!

November's weather

Sorry for the lack of October information. There was a fault with the weather station that Olle fixed for me very late in the month. However, I have a full reading of November:

It's clear that things changed around November 19: the wind kicked up, the temperature dropped and we had a bit of rain. It's still pretty dry by my measurements, though. That is concerning.

I expect we will see the winter start to take hold next month! 

September's weather

It was a pretty nice month, becoming colder and wetter only in the last week.

Lucky for Sooz's girlfriends, they avoided the worst of the cool weather. When they left, she holed up in the stuga and caught up on her jigsaw puzzles.

Now we enter a quiet period; the house is closed up and we don't plan to be back until April.

When we do return, though, it will be with a bang. We'll be moving a bunch of our belongings over to Sweden to begin actually living there over the summer.

I would expect the blog will get a lot more activity after then. Stay tuned!!!

August's weather

It was a warm August, to put it mildly. The first few days were well over 85°F (30°C). Even the end of the month was well into the 70's.

The drought broke a bit earlier in the month, with just under 2 inches (50mm) measured. This is about on par with the past two Augusts. However, year to date we've seen less than half the usual amount of rain. We're hoping for wet weather this fall!

July's weather

It was hot.

July was the warmest since records began 260 years ago. The average temperature in Stockholm was 22.4°C (72.3°F).

The archipelago is usually a bit cooler, especially earlier in the summer, owing to the chilling effect of the Baltic. My weather station's July average was 21°C.

It also continued to be worryingly dry. We had a couple of thundershowers, but those brief heavy rains don't help much. We need a nice wet fall and winter to help replenish the plants and animals on our little island.

Wildfires

This nice warm and sunny weather is great for those of us on holiday, but the drought is terrible for most everyone else. Farmers are warning of a very poor harvest. I read an article that said blueberry production might be only 20% of normal.

Even worse are the unprecedented wildfires around the country. The Local and the Guardian have good recaps of the scale of the problem.

I'm used to wildfires in the western USA, but Scandinavia (and England) are not prepared for this. Scientists fear that global warming will make fires like these more common in the coming years.

June's weather

A calm month out on Aspö. One thing that's interesting is the rain as measured by my station. I know it did rain a bit that month, although I'm not convinced it totaled a half-inch. The official weather report for Stockholm showed no precipitation at all on June (or May for that matter).

Whether or not it rained a bit on Aspö this past month, there is a significant drought underway. It's apparent when walking around our island, and there is no rain in the forecast for the next few weeks.

It's a double-edged sword, as we love the sunshine and warmth, but the health of our island is starting to be impacted too....

May's weather

There's been a nice warming trend all month. The bigger story, though, is how dry and sunny it has been. Since the rain of May 4th (ironically when we were visiting), Sweden has enjoyed blue skies. It has been glorious, true, but this dry period is starting to be worrying. 

Especially for us island residents, the dry weather can become a problem. There are fire hazards and stress on flora and fauna. More personally, we all rely on our wells, and a long dry snap will stress our water supplies.

Let's see what June brings us. Odds are historically high that it will rain over Midsummer!!

April's weather

It's getting slowly warmer over the month. What's interesting is the sharper rise in the indoor temperature. That's driven by the increased sunshine as we pass the vernal equinox. The house is being warmed through the big windows in the afternoons. There will likely be days in July when it's too hot! But I look forward to having that as a problem.

I left the sound meter reading in just for fun. It's quite obvious when we're home!

March's weather

A slow and steady climb bringing us above freezing throughout the month, with the exception of a cold snap on March 26. There were a few snowy days in the middle of the month, but it's been worryingly dry since. We could use a wet spring to replenish our ground water for sure!

We're back!

We managed to get out of Gatwick before the forecasted snowfall and accomplished a straightforward train-airport-bus-boat journey straight to our house. As I thought, the house was warm but not exactly toasty when we arrived. In fairness, it was a tough task for our luftpump to warm up our house from such a cold start. A few hours with the radiators and all was well.

The house was, as usual, in fine shape. There was about 6 inches of powdery snow on the deck. We were able to sweep it away easily. It was strange (for me at least) to be at the house and not have lots of projects. Fortunately, I had lots of emails to keep me busy!

Friday was grey and miserable outside but Saturday was sunny and beautiful. We had our usually wonderful dinner at Annika and Olle's house on Saturday night, and we watched Melodifestival as well. Before we left on Sunday morning, we watched the Vasaloppet on TV, which was a lot more entertaining than we expected.

I have a photo page of our icy island for anyone interested.

Leaving soon!

It looks like we've picked a frigid weekend to for our visit. Both Sweden and the UK are being hit by a blast of arctic air.

I set the luftpump to 8°C Sunday morning when it was -2° in the house. It didn't take long for the house to warm up to that level. After a few days of that, I ramped it up to 15°, and it appears the cold weather outside (as low as -12°) is making it hard for the house to get any warmer.

We won't be arriving at a cold house, but I'm not sure just how warm it will be!

A weekend visit

We're going to make a rare cold-weather visit to our stuga at the end of the month. Now that we have our remote-control luftpump, we can have the house nice and toasty for our arrival.

I'll be sure to post lots of photos of winter life on the island!

January's weather

I'm missing the first few days of January, because as I reported last month, I had a fault with my weather station that Annika and Olle fixed for me on a visit to the house. So, without further ado:

It's pretty clear that a warm and wet weather front came in around the 23rd. Sadly though, it brought only a half-inch of rain in total. We could definitely use a lot more rain (or snow) this winter to replenish our groundwater.

December's weather

It's only a partial report this month. My Netatmo mysteriously stopped reporting on December 15. The power and wi-fi were still on as I could see the webcams and the luftpump, but no weather reports, frustratingly.

The good news is that Olle and Annika stopped by yesterday and found that the power plug had somehow become loose! They plugged it back in and all is well again, so I will be able to share most all of January's weather observations.

November's weather

Pretty cold and dreary this month. Most days had a little bit of rain, although the total for the month was just over an inch. A few days drifted below freezing, although the real cold has not hit just yet.