The Vagaries of the Weather

I imagine that many of you are ridiculously tired of hearing me talk about how cold I am all the time and how snowy it is all the time here, but I feel like now I have new insight having been back in the last week and seeing just how quickly these things can change.

So, let’s just sum up the last week of my existence in Spain:

I arrived last Thursday and luckily made it back to Burgos before the middle of the country was blanketed with a snow storm that effectively shut down Barajas Airport for a day or two, cancelling hundreds of flights and basically causing tons of people to live in the airport all weekend. Meanwhile, I happened to be in the north of the country where the weather hovered around 10C all weekend and was generally glorious – I could even go out on Sunday afternoon without a jacket on, that’s how nice it was.

I got home on Sunday night, and then woke up Monday morning to -9C weather – that’s a difference of about 35F degrees in a 24 hour period. It literally did not make it out of negative degrees all day on Monday, which was rather swell.

Then, Tuesday it snows. And it was actually pretty nice – by pretty nice, I mean 0-2C during the day. See how this becomes relative all of a sudden? The temperature slowly warmed throughout the week, but never getting out of the double digits. And then WHAM – the most glorious weekend, with temperatures in the low 50s and sunshine and just a generally pleasant atmosphere to be outside in. I remember thinking, “Gosh, isn’t it a luxury to actually enjoy walking outside and window shopping as opposed to speed-walking as fast as possible so you don’t freeze in transit from your house to the bus to the school?”

Oh, and here’s the best part: tomorrow it’s supposed to be relatively nice again, and then another snow storm and highs of 2C throughout the middle of the week.  WHAT?!

I suppose here’s what I have concluded: A) winter weather outside of California rather sucks. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that icing on the cake: while I was literally freezing my rear end off, it was 70F in Palo Alto all week. Talk about totally unfair. B) I thought I was okay with the the winter weather, not dying so much, and then it was -9C for a day and I realized that winter weather is miserable. Why do people subject themselves to it? C) Why is it allowed to be in the 50s all weekend and get my hopes up only to plunge me back into freezing misery this week? This seems totally and cosmically cruel.

I have another conclusion, actually, and it’s this: the snow isn’t really so much the problem – in fact, I think walking through gently falling snow to catch the bus is rather romantic and beautiful – but it’s the ice that inevitably sticks around afterwards that’s the killer. I can guarantee a serious wipe out due to some combination of me walking too fast-me wearing shoes without appropriate grip-sneaky hiding patches of ice sometime in the near future. It’s a serious mine-field out there. And the worst is that you know it’s coming and can’t do anything about it! As in, “Oh, how lovely, it’s snowing, but it’s probably going to dip below freezing tonight and turn all the nice snow and melted snow into hidden ice rinks all over the sidewalk so that I fall and bruise my hip on my way to rushing to the bus.” Dangerous, I tell you.

So, there you go. Again, I’m sure everyone who actually has winters colder than 45F already knows this and is rolling their eyes at my silliness, but I was just so surprised by the sudden weather changes and how completely different each day can be from the next. Let’s hope I can learn to appreciate the beautiful weather for when it comes instead of dwelling on the below zero days, right?

 

Snow Pictures!

Since I subjected y’all to two whole posts about snow and how insanely cold I am, I would like to post some pictures now that show you just how snowy the weather got today. Before, it had kind of snowed for an hour or so with nothing really sticking, but today it snowed for a good portion of the afternoon, and it definitely left its mark!

Pedestrian Bridge across the River Arlanzon

River Arlanzon

The Espolon

La Castanera

Plaza de la Catedral

Snowy Cathedral

Enjoy the photos, and send me warm thoughts!

 

Snow, the Sequel

After having lived in the frigidness that is Burgos in the wintertime for one week – okay, five days – I feel like I can talk about some lessons I’ve learned from living with snow. All you people who have lived in the snow before or who are less weak than I am can feel free to laugh at me, as you’ve likely known these things from birth, but indulge me, okay?

1. It is colder when it doesn’t snow than when it does. Now, as a good Atmospheric Sciences tutor, theoretically I know this to be true: when the skies are clear, it’s colder than when the skies are covered and (possibly) precipitating snow. However, I have just truly learned that this is true this past week. Today was cold, with snow and the temperature hovering around 0 degrees Celsius all day, but for some reason it didn’t seem as cold as the past few, very clear and sunny, days have felt. So I guess I grudgingly owe snow that bit of gratitude.

2. Slush sucks. Whoever invented slush or thought it would be cool to have snow kinda-sorta stick on the ground was just a huge jerk. I left my house this afternoon to go meet some friends for coffee, and by the time I finished my 7 minute walk to the cafe, my feet were wet and frozen because of the slushy crap on the ground. I would rather it was raining – I get rain, it’s wet, I know how to avoid puddles in the rain – or with a decent ground cover of snow than slushy. It’s deceptively wet and icky. And kind of snow, but really just not.

3. Snow is pretty when it falls. I am hugely retarded for having just written that sentence, I know, but I was walking back from the gym today in the gently falling snow, and I thought, “I get why people like this so much!” It was a serious moment of revelation (unfortunately followed a few short hours later by my slush adventure, please re-read point #2), and while all my body parts weren’t freezing themselves off at that moment, I was pretty sure snow was okay.

4. Windchill also sucks. Again, everything that I said about the suckiness of slush holds true for wind, as well. Burgos is infamous (apparently) for its wind, and it’s true – there are certain corners that I walk around every day that I know to expect strong winds at. But this is especially sucky when I read the weather report in the morning and it says, “40 degrees (YES! It’s warm outside today!), feels like 30 (GAH!)”. Wind should be banned from existence. Or at least people should come put up some turbines in Burgos to make it useful and energy efficient.

Alrighty, I think that’s all I need to quejarme (=complain) about this evening. I am warm in casa, and I have recently learned how my heating works (not a moment too soon!), so really things could be worse. I will TRY to get my post up about last weekend in Madrid – very exciting!! – sometime this weekend for all three of you who read my blog.

ADDENDUM!

I have found one more thing that seems to come with the wintery weather, learned today while walking home in a true snow-flurry, without an umbrella and rather cold:

5. People walk slower/are more annoying when it’s snowing. I love Spain and Spanish people in general, but aware of other people’s physical space they are not. Add to that the fact that every single person has an umbrella glued to their head which impedes their vision even more, and you have a population of people who are paying ZERO attention to you and other people walking in their space. No, perhaps NEGATIVE attention. The number of times I have been nearly stabbed in the eye by someone’s umbrella spike is insane. Also, when you have an umbrella, that means that you have to walk near the street and you cannot stroll under the overhang, because that’s where people without umbrellas (and therefore by definition want to get someplace quickly) have priority to walk. But I promise you people seem to stroll more when it’s yucky weather. With their umbrella spikes protuding. Ahhh, the danger!