This is not how Esja, Reykjavík’s city mountain, looks today.
This is how Esja, and Reykjavík, generally look in December. This photo, for example, is from December 4th, 2011. But this year, winter never really came. We had a couple brief cold periods and some brief snows, but then they left. It’s been rainy. It’s been warm. Bizarrely warm. And here is how Esja looked when I headed out of my place today:
Want to get a sense of how snowless that is? Here’s what Esja generally looks like in June:
It’s only a week and a half until the winter solstice. Do my images look dim? They were taken at 2:30 PM — and because our timezone is offset by nearly an hour and a half, that’s actually a sun position of 1:00. They’re dim because we get almost zero direct sunlight, just a below-horizon glow this time of year, all day. There’s supposed to be snow on the ground at sea level. Esja is nearly a kilometer high. Yet nearly snowless.
I continue my drive, turning into Hvalfjörður (Whale Fjord), to stop by my land.
I stopped by my land to prepare some of my plants for winter, something I normally would have done months ago. And it still appears to have been too soon:
After preparing them for “winter” I headed down the road to the Fossá (Waterfall River). Specifically, the “Eastern Waterfall River” (the Western Waterfall River is right near my land). Did I mention that we’re kind of littered with waterfalls here? ;)
And off I went through the forest, looking for Folaldafoss (Foal Falls). Yes, we do have forests, try not to be too surprised ;)
Birds that are supposed to have left months ago were singing in the woods. I stopped to film some with my cell phone:
And finally, the falls.
Just how weird is this weather? Well, it’s certainly not normal. Our highs/lows over the past week have been 6,2°/8,3°C; 4°/7,4°C; 6,8°/9,8°C; 6,2°C/6,6°C; 5,6°C/8,6°C; and 4,5°/8,5°C. To put that into perspective, our average lows/highs in May are 3,6°C/8,4°C; in September it’s 5,0°/10,0°C; and October it’s 2,2°/6,8°C. This is late spring/early fall weather, even bordering on the cooler ends of summer. Bloody weird.