It’s Snow Joke in Trondheim

We are quite Oslo-centric on this blog. Take last month, when we proclaimed the arrival of spring after a beautiful weekend in the capital. Gerry, our resident blogger from Trondheim, has a different view…

It might very well have been an April Fools prank.

After a Saturday above 7º C, in which I walked with my jacket open and just a t-shirt beneath, it came the mother of all snowfalls. Five days (and counting) of continuous snow. Huge amounts of accumulation, after spring commencement.

I was already considering taking my shorts out of storage!

(Anyway, I got it coming for trusting Trondheim’s weather)

Spring season in Trondheim is full of changing, unpredictable weather. Snow comes half an hour, stops about the same time, then it starts all over again until you slip and twist an ankle. Unlike late autumn/winter snow, however, there are no longer those little stones spread to give you purchase over packed snow. Sometimes chilling rain comes to soften snow.

Eventually, of course, windy-wet spring comes. Though bothersome, it’s not really as bad nor as chilly as the winter mix preceding it. It’s still not as cool (cool as in “great”, not as in “chilly”) as spring somewhere else (or anywhere else, for the matter.) Spring in Trondheim is tolerable if you tolerate being wet all the time.

After a slow raise of temperatures and decease in frequency in rains, summer arrives. Summer is great, actually. It’s warm but not hot, sunny with little clouds to bother your basking. In short, summer is the very best week of the year (OK, the joke is getting old, and I still admit I shamelessly stole it from a certain South-African comedian. But this is my guest post after all and I will do as I see fit)

Resuming, summer in Trondheim is warm, sunny, dry, and full of half-naked sunbathers. It also unfortunately short. Come July, you have to start taking out your umbrellas and ponchos, because rain starts pouring again. Slowly at first, then…

No, scrap that. Rain resumes raging from start to end. Late summer and fall we are bathed in whatever chilly rain we missed during spring. Luckily, snow eventually arrives, and after so much rain, it is actually welcome!

At least the first few days (for all those who missed my first guest post, my reaction to snow for the first time of my life was like this: first two weeks, charming winter scenery; second two weeks, crappy blizzards all day; rest of the season, meh.)

And so it goes. The weather cycle goes and goes, and those who live in Trondheim have to put up with it. In the end, however, I admit I enjoy it most of the time.

Houses, transportation and clothes are made to withstand weather, and I feel more comfortable most of the time than in the hellish hotness of Monterrey, or the not-as-cold-yet-below-zero conditions inside my parents house in Durango.

Now, if you excuse me, I have to go and plow myself a path to the sidewalk.