Gray and rain are the new normal, wind too

There's an autumnal feeling in the air, supported by weather forecasts predicting lower temperatures, several days of rain, and if no rain, cloudy and gray skies. And it's still only August 20th. Too soon. 

Gray and rain are the new normal. I cannot remember a summer that has been quite like this one--rainy days interspersed with a few sunny ones. We awake to mostly gray skies each day. It's been warm and humid for Oslo; temperatures in May, June and July hovered around 70 degrees during the day, with a few warmer days. So neither the garden nor I are complaining, just commenting. Although I am complaining a little bit, as too much grayness and rain can lead to depression. I know this first-hand, because when the sun comes out, I'm a different person--motivated, cheerful, energetic. All the things I'm not on gray days. The Norwegians have a saying--det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær. Translated it means, there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Essentially, you should learn to dress for bad weather since it can suddenly be a reality when you are outdoors. I don't agree with this statement; bad weather exists independently of the type of clothing you wear. You cannot prepare for all eventualities. It's a statement meant to keep you positive about weather developments. It has the opposite effect on me, and when people say it to me thinking that it will cheer me up, I want to clobber them. 

Weather has become the main topic of conversation among most people. People are constantly checking their weather apps on their phones. I know I do several times a day, wondering when the rain is going to start, or if a sunny day is predicted, when the gray clouds will roll in. Because they usually do at some point. 

Wind is the other new normal. Wind has become a part of life when it never was before. I began to notice this a couple of years ago, because being out on our boat has become an iffy affair for me. I don't like being out on the water when it's windy: I don't like the resultant waves and choppiness. Back in the 1990s, there were weeks with stable, sunny, non-windy weather. Temperatures may not have been hot, but it was warm and nice outdoors and wind was not a problem. Gray skies were not so prevalent either. Who knew it would change so much in our lifetime? 

The weather has become erratic. One nice day followed by several days of grayness and rain. Storms are now much more intense and more frequent than when we were children. The frequency of hurricanes has increased, likewise the frequency of tornadoes. In other parts of the country and in other countries, there are forest fires and wildfires that produce smoke that enters the atmosphere, changing the weather patterns, like last year when the Canadian wildfires sent smoke into the northeast US states. The fallout of hurricanes on the northeast coast of the USA has become dangerous--storm surges, flooding, high winds, and rain. Lots of rain. Not to mention what the hurricanes do to Caribbean and the parts of the world where they originate. The recent fallout from hurricane Ernesto led to flash flooding in Connecticut that killed two women. Major highways in NY and NJ were closed due to flooding. Flights were cancelled. People who live in basement apartments were told to seek higher ground. 

Erratic weather is a reminder that we live on a planet in a solar system that is constantly changing. Our planet is changing. Climate change is real, whether it is natural or man-made. What difference does it make whether we created it or whether it would have occurred anyway? The fact of the matter remains is that we're in the middle of it and have to deal with it. And it's not going to be an easy task. 

September update on the weather and the garden

Weatherwise, this summer will go down in history as one of the worst since I moved here. It started off well in June, with sunny days and warm temperatures. The garden needed to be watered nearly every day, and the vegetables that I planted (pumpkin, zucchini, carrots, tomatoes and string beans) got off to a good start. Then came July, when all it did was rain. It was as though a gray cloud of bad weather settled in over Oslo. The statistics speak for themselves; it rained 22 of the 31 days in July in Oslo, and the 9 dry days were overcast with the sun peeking through every now and then. August wasn't much different, unfortunately; I don't have the stats for how many days it rained in August, but it must have rivaled July.

Today, September 4th, was a real summer day, sunny and warm with temperatures close to 80 degrees F. It was the first day that I wore a summer dress and went bare-legged. It was a pleasure to feel the warm sun on my skin and to walk along the boardwalk on the fjord this evening. I looked out over the water and could see the warm haze in the distance. That's how summer should be. We ate dinner at a seafood restaurant called Solsiden (Solsiden Restaurant); it's open only for the summer season. It was a perfect evening to be there. 

The garden decided to call it quits in early August and started preparing for autumn. The pumpkins ended up being quite small; there were five of them but none of them were larger than about four to five pounds. They were turning orange already at the end of July. The string bean plants stopped producing beans at the end of July. The tomato and cucumber plants did not do well in all the rain; the cucumbers were deformed and most of the tomatoes rotted on the vines. The potatoes were fine, likewise the zucchinis, which didn't seem to mind the lack of sun and warmth. The carrots were stubby. But all the berry bushes produced a lot of berries this year, including the blackberry bush. So we have a freezer full of different berries--black currants, red currants, blackberries, raspberries, and gooseberries. The blueberry bushes however did not produce any berries this year, and I'm not sure why. 

Each year in the garden is a revelation and a surprise; you learn something new each year and you never quite know how the gardening season will develop. This year it started off well, plateaued early, and faded out early. I'm hoping for a better summer weatherwise next year. 

A month of rain

It has rained on and off in Oslo for nearly a month now, sometimes heavily, other times lightly. Each day we wake up and hope for sun, sunshine, warmth--for the crisp, cool days of autumn punctuated by sunny blue skies. But apparently, it's not to be, not this year. I have no idea how much longer this weather is expected to continue. If it's too hot or too cold (extremes), people will complain. But I never complain that it is too sunny outside. And I don't complain when it rains a few days here or there. But this type of rainy weather that we have now is irksome. I'm glad I got most of my garden prep work for the winter done during September and early October. I've been in the garden a few times during the past few weeks; the ground is muddy and slippery, the grass is a soggy, sloppy mess, and the air is damp and chilly. Not very inviting to spend time there. 

In the summer of 2018, Western Europe experienced a heat wave for several weeks that was often referred to as a 'heat dome' that had situated itself over that area; it led to drought-like conditions. I remember it well because we were traveling in England and Ireland at the time, and most of the vegetation we saw was not green, but brown. Everything had dried up or dried out. These weeks of rain I will be labeling a 'rain dome' even though I know there is no such thing in meteorology. I've read that some meteorologists have stated that this is normal autumn weather. I reply unequivocally that it is not. There is nothing normal about this weather. 

Anyone who states that climate change is a hoax is simply not registering what is going on around them. It doesn't matter to me whether the climate change is natural or manmade. The point is that it's happening all around us. I am not very optimistic that we will be able to do much to reverse it. Perhaps we will be able to slow it down, but it's not encouraging to witness the increase in the number of hurricanes, the increase in hurricane intensities, the melting of the glaciers in Greenland, the melting of the polar caps, the rising sea levels, and the steadily increasing instability of the atmosphere. This past summer in Oslo had to be one of the windiest on record. I gauge that by how many times we were out on the boat; I don't go out on the boat when it's windy because I don't like the resultant choppy water. I was on the boat about three or four times this past summer. That's not a lot compared to other summers where the weather has been more stable. 

It is said that one can get used to pretty much anything. I hope that is the case. Humankind in the twenty-first century has a lot of formidable challenges in store for it. I don't think all of the challenges can be met or tackled. For the first time in my life, I see the limitations of our human existence and of science. We live after all on a planet in a universe that is constantly expanding. There is no reason to expect that our planet will remain stable in terms of its meteorology. And there is no reason to expect that mankind can win against the forces of nature and the universe.

The promise of summer

I could just as well have entitled this post ’a taste of summer’. Either way, you’ll understand what I mean about fleeting glimpses of summer—those tantalizing warm sunny days that lead you to believe that real summer is right around the corner. But somehow real summer never materializes. That has been the summer experience in Oslo this year. Perhaps it is more correct to say that summer (as most of us define it—sunny and warm days) came and went in May, which had some wonderfully warm summer-like days (in fact, I wrote a post at that time called The Smells of Summer: http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2012/05/smells-of-summer.html). May was followed by two months of gray skies and rain. Temperatures have hovered around sixty degrees Fahrenheit since then. Summer has been struggling futilely to return. And then, it happened. Today is a real summer day. Yesterday was also a real summer day. Tomorrow is predicted to be a real summer day. I’ll believe it when I see it. I trust nothing and no one, not the clear night sky of tonight, not the balmy night temperature, not the golden moon, not weather reporters, and least of all the newspapers that are constantly telling us that ‘summer is finally here’. No, it’s not (well maybe it will be for the rest of August—hope springs eternal. I’m not a pessimist). Real summer is what I just experienced for ten glorious days in New York. So hot (temperatures hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit) that it feels like the heat is rising up from the street pavements, so hot that you have to throw off the bed sheets at night, even though the ceiling fan is on (can’t run the air-conditioners 24/7—the electric bills would be out of sight). So hot that my friend’s terrace is too hot to walk on in my bare feet. So hot that you think about running through the sprinkler that is watering the plants that need the water more than we do. But I am not complaining. My friends complained about the heat. The New York media reported and complained about the heat. Not me. I savored every chance I got to soak in the sun’s warmth and the summer’s heat and humidity. I walked when others drove their air-conditioned cars, although I enjoyed the a/c too, don’t misunderstand me. I had my water bottle with me on my walks and sipped it when I got thirsty. I rested when I got tired. That’s what the heat forces you to do—slow down. You can do everything you normally do, just at a slower pace. And really, what’s wrong with that? I took the train into Manhattan from Irvington, and sat on the platform benches waiting for the train, breathing in the smell of the wooden platform and the tracks. I see what I never saw before, because now I am a tourist in my home state, and I get to appreciate what I took for granted before when I was younger and lived there. I never get over how beautiful New York State is during the summer months. It doesn’t matter if I am upstate (in Tarrytown, Cortlandt Manor, Albany, or Pine Bush) or in New York City. New York is a beautiful state; it has the Hudson River, the lovely Hudson River towns and estates that I have written about many times, lakes, lush green parks and forests, and abundant farmland. It also has the Catskill and Adirondack mountains; I have not spent much time hiking in them, but it’s on my bucket list. Once you get outside of the city, you come into contact with a myriad of insects—mosquitoes, spiders, flies, crickets, and cicadas. You hear the latter two in the evenings, especially. Do I get bitten by mosquitoes? Yes I do, and the bites are irritating enough so that I ended up buying Benadryl to alleviate the itching. Ticks have become a real problem in semi-rural and rural areas; I actually know several people who have had Lyme’s disease—hikers, golfers, and fishermen.

Back in Oslo. I hope for some continuous weeks of summer from now on. Why? So that the feeling of anxiety disappears, that nagging, slightly frantic feeling of wanting to pack a summer’s worth of experiences into one or two warm days, as though we have gotten a reprieve from prison and have to make the most of it. That feeling that you cannot waste a single warm day, because a real summer day wasted is a summer day gone forever. It has felt like that for some of us this summer. You make the best of it, you don’t complain, you live one day at a time, and you hope for better weather. But many Norwegians decided early on to abandon their country for warmer lands—and did so in droves. The charter trip companies made out like bandits this summer. Financially-struggling countries in southern Europe found themselves invaded by northern Europeans seeking sun and warmth. So it’s not just me who misses real summers. And I can remember real summers here in Oslo during the 1990s when I first moved here; the shift toward cooler, shorter and rainier summers has occurred during the past five to seven years. If this is what global warming is doing to our planet--changing weather patterns to this degree--then I can only wonder about what future summers will bring.   

Summer cottage at Nesoddtangen

We are currently vacationing for a week at a summer cottage on Nesoddtangen (the tip of the Nesodden peninsula). We have rented this particular cottage many times during the past twenty years that I have lived in Norway. The cottage was willed to the cancer hospital where my husband works, like several others available for summer rentals, by patients who felt that they had received good treatment there. At present, there are at least six (perhaps more) such cottages available for rental; through my hospital the number is about the same. Some are cottages in the mountains; others are cottages on the sea. Our cottage, situated on the Oslo fjord, is about a twenty-five minute ferry ride from Oslo. It is far enough away from the city to get the feeling that one is out in the countryside, yet near enough to it via the ferry if there is reason to make the trip. In the ‘old days’ (early 1990s), we would sometimes take the ferry or our own boat into the city, to the Aker Brygge shopping area, to do some necessary grocery shopping, fill up on supplies, eat lunch at one of its many restaurants, or just walk around and window-shop. With our boat we were able to take longer boat trips around the Nesodden peninsula or to Drøbak, a lovely little coastal town about an hour’s boat ride from Nesoddtangen. One year we rented the cabin in September, even though we no longer were on vacation; we lived there for the week and went into work each day by boat. We would make a thermos of coffee for the trip and drink it on the way into Oslo harbor, shivering in the chilly autumn air.

Cottage at Nesoddtangen

The other night, as I sat writing in the cottage’s large living room, I noticed that storm clouds were gathering and the wind was picking up. I could hear it blowing around the cabin. It was only 7pm, but storm clouds filled the sky, threatening rain later on. The weather has been so unstable this summer; torrential rains one day followed by a day with hail and snow (in some areas of Oslo). That was last week. Other days are warm and sunny, like today, a real summer day, when the blue skies seem to go on forever. But as far as the weather goes, one needs to be prepared for all eventualities. After twenty years here, I have learned to take the weather in stride. 

Fireplace at the cottage

The first evening of our arrival at the cabin, it was chilly, so my husband lit a fire in the large red-brick fireplace in the corner of the living room. The fire’s warmth, topped off by a cup of hot chocolate, made everything alright with the world, and it didn’t matter if it was chilly outside in the middle of summer. The following day, the temperatures were warmer, although the sky was still a bluish-gray, dominated by large storm clouds--rain was predicted. During late afternoon, the winds pick up and don’t die down until around 8pm. Sometimes you can hear the wind blowing almost mournfully through the trees during the night, a sound that takes some getting used to, because it is so continual. And this year, unlike previous years, the cottage grounds are literally infested with brown Iberia snails; it’s difficult not to step on them. They have become quite a problem in recent years for the eastern part of Norway.

Brown snail on road

My early memories of being in Norway are bound up in visits to this cottage during the summers, in large festive parties that we managed to throw on meager budgets in the early days, pleasant times with relatives, friends, and their children. We often sat out until late in the evening, talking and laughing. It would be light outside until 11pm. Sometimes there was someone who played guitar, and we sang along. During the day, the children played along the shore, looking for mussels to crack open so that they could be used as bait for crabs. The crabs were always tossed back into the water; too small to eat. I used to love photographing the jellyfish—two kinds-brennmanet (Lion's mane jellyfish, which is a stinging jellyfish with long tentacles) and glassmanet (generally non-stinging). The former look like fried eggs sunny side up; the latter are fragile-looking, glassy in appearance, and quite beautiful with their green and pink hues. I love watching how they move and swim. I don’t see many of them this year, unfortunately. 

Brennmanet or Lion's mane jellyfish

Sometimes at night we would go down to the wharf where our boat was moored and look at the small bioluminescent creatures in the water (phytoplankton). They were like little dots of light flickering in the dark water, which was filled with them. During lazy afternoons we would go berry-picking; there were raspberry bushes in front and off to the side of the cottage (there are still a few) and along the road leading down to the ferry. If we were lucky we found wild strawberry bushes.

Much has changed during the past twenty or so years, in regard to the cottage itself as well as its visitors. When we first used to come here, drinking water had to be drawn up from a well, and drawing it up was hard work. The cottage had no bathroom—no shower or toilet; rather an outhouse that I do not remember fondly. I remember hating outhouses already as a young child; one of our favorite family picnic areas in Pound Ridge, New York had outhouses instead of regular bathrooms-- the outhouses themselves were unpleasant places to enter—dark and filled with flies, and the smell was awful and pervasive. Over the years, the outhouse at the cottage was replaced by what was called an environmental toilet located in a ‘bathroom’ of sorts attached to the house, and this year, to our (happy) surprise, that room has now been converted into a regular bathroom with a full shower, sink and toilet. Most ‘cottages’ now in Norway are quite luxurious (and not really cabins at all)—arrayed with all the trimmings—radiant floor heat, state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms, exemplifying the accumulation of personal wealth in this country over the past twenty years. People want convenience and comfort now. When it comes to having a nice bathroom, I am in that group. But otherwise, I am content with the simple trappings of this cottage. Many of the couples with whom we socialized early on are no longer together. Some have new partners and new lives, and are no longer in our circle. Those couples who are still together now vacation in warmer places—where sun and warmth are guaranteed. I can honestly understand their wish for sunshine, warmth, and stable summer weather. Sometimes I miss the old days though. Some relatives are quite elderly now, too frail to make the journey to visit us at the cottage. We make the journey to visit them instead. The children who used to come here are grown up now and will soon be having children of their own. My husband and I are alone at the cottage this week, enjoying our time alone, reading, writing (me), sleeping, shopping for groceries, watching TV in the late evenings, and being generally lazy. Time passes slowly, but it passes and moves us onward. Next week I will be in New York for my annual visit. When I remember back to our time at the cottage, during the wintertime perhaps, I will wonder what it was we did each day at the cottage. But then I look at photos and remember; today my husband picked wildflowers, yesterday we were able to barbecue, today we took a long boat trip, and so on. I look at him, at our life, and wonder how it is that more than twenty years have passed since we first got together, since I first moved to Norway. Time for reflection will do that to you; nostalgia, memories, common sense, acceptance of life, of aging, of watching the next generation take over for ours; all of these things seem more intense to me when I have the time to reflect upon them. It does not make me sad; it’s more that I register my tiny place in the scheme of things, in the universe, and my small contributions to the life around me. I have to say that things feel right with the world when you know where and how you fit into the scheme of things. It’s good to get perspective.

Fjord view from the cottage, with our wooden boat (mid-picture)

Sunset at Nesoddtangen and the docked passenger ferry

Wildflowers that my husband picked

Monday morning in Oslo

Update on the weather—about the same as it’s been the past few days. Raining today; it rained yesterday (although it cleared up nicely last evening—long enough for me to get in a bike ride), and it rained a bit on Saturday as well. But we enjoyed two restaurant visits in spite of the weather, sitting indoors of course—on Friday evening at Mucho Mas for excellent Mexican food, and on Saturday evening we found our way to Jonoe at Ringnes Park for some excellent sushi. We’re on vacation now for the next four weeks, so it’s only to pray for some nice weather. I hope whoever created the Higgs boson is listening to our prayers!!

I saw an article today in Britain’s newspaper The Guardian, that the weather in England isn’t much better than here. Rain, and lots of it. And more to come. That’s what’s predicted for Oslo this week. So I guess I better tackle my indoor projects that are waiting for me. No time like the present! Still working on my photo and writing projects, so I guess I won’t complain (too much) about the weather. I’ve sorted through my recent photos and organized them. I’ve created a few photo blog posts and written a few posts for my other blogs. The house is in order, household tasks are mostly done, and now I can read and write to my heart’s content.

The USA is experiencing one of the worst heat waves on record, with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I can attest to that, as I grew up in New York, and I can only remember one or two summers in my growing up when the temperatures even approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 degrees Celsius) or went slightly over that temperature. New York summers were always warm and humid though, and it was nice to come inside to an air-conditioned home or office to cool down. Or perhaps we ran through someone’s sprinkler to cool down; I remember doing this often as a child. There were always some homeowners who were watering their lawns and who didn’t mind that we ran through their sprinklers. I remember some wicked New York thunderstorms, with intense thunder and a lot of lightning, followed by torrential rains. And then, the storm was over and the sun came out and life went back to summer normal. But when I talk to family and friends now about the weather in New York, many of them say it’s nothing like it was when we were young. So I have to conclude that either we all have collectively bad memories, or that weather patterns have definitely changed. Whether the changes are natural or the result of global warming, I cannot say. But I can also say that summers in Oslo are not like they were in the early 1990s when I first moved here, so I really do believe that weather patterns are changing. I can remember longer periods with sunshine in June and July in Oslo, where it was possible to go out on the boat without being drenched by a sudden rainstorm. It’s harder to trust that there will be stable weather now, anywhere.

Musings about science and scientists, and the weather

I’ve been at a scientific conference (dealing with the cell cycle and regulators of cell proliferation) most of the week; it started on Monday night and ended this morning. I wasn’t able to attend all the sessions each day, but I managed to be present for some really top-notch lectures delivered by Nobel prize winners and international experts in their respective fields. That’s always an encouraging and inspiring experience; it reminds me of why I chose this profession—a scientific research career, when I hear top speakers talk about their work. Many of the top speakers were older men who more or less summed up their research careers in their lectures. I have more appreciation for that type of lecture now—maybe because I’ve been in research a long time myself. I know the ins and outs and ups and downs of this business, and I appreciate hearing the opinions advanced by these speakers, because they know what they’re talking about. So when a few of them talk about the importance of small research groups as opposed to large ones, I’m suddenly all ears. I agree with them. Small groups are the places where innovative ideas are born. We should not be getting rid of small research groups. We should not be discouraging younger people from pursuing academic careers. But the granting powers that be are doing so. By not funding scientists who lead small research groups, they ensure that younger scientists cannot continue because they will never get the chance to start their own small groups. By not encouraging younger scientists to fly free rather than clipping their wings which happens all the time now, we are eliminating the pool of future scientists that each society so absolutely requires. Younger scientists are leaving academia. There is no place for most of them. There are no jobs for them and there is no real future for them. This is confirmed for me at most conferences. Younger scientists in this country (post-doc level and above) are little more than slaves for their group leaders. They are doing two and three post-doc periods and finding themselves without any prospects after they finish. They are not being offered staff scientist positions or group leader status. They’re rather told that they’re too aggressive or too independent. And they are, of course. Who wouldn’t be after three post-doc periods? That’s the point of post-doc periods—to create independence and self-sufficiency in intelligent and enthusiastic scientists. But their wings are being clipped in huge numbers, and the granting situation for the future will ensure that there will eventually be no post-doc or staff scientist positions at all. But there will be a lot of PhD student positions. God knows what this country will do with all the new PhD recipients. There aren’t jobs for them. And little is being done to create new jobs for them. Many of them will end up as salespeople or will leave the profession for greener pastures. The only reason there are currently so many PhD positions is because the principal investigators who run research groups need slaves and lots of hands to do their work for them while they are busy writing grants and networking with their fellow group leaders. They know there is no real research future for the PhDs they’re turning out, either in academia or in industry. And industry is not really stepping up to the plate to meet the future needs either.  

The meeting was held at the Holmenkollen Park Rica Hotel at the top of the city of Oslo, literally. On a clear day, there is an amazing view of the fjord and of the city from this vantage point. But of course, the weather this past week was not cooperative, so the hilltop and hotel were mostly shrouded in fog, and when there wasn’t fog, it was raining. I cannot remember a summer like this one—it has rained steadily, if not daily, at least several times per week. The non-Norwegians at the meeting were asking me if the weather was always like this. It isn’t. Today was a perfect example. The last day of the meeting is of course when the sun chose to reappear and blue skies took over--just perfect for walking. So I walked to work from the top of the city to my hospital. It took me about an hour door to door. Relaxing and enjoyable to walk downhill for the most part, take in the nature around me, and just enjoy being outdoors in the sunshine. It was a sharp contrast to Tuesday night, when the entire meeting was treated to a boat trip on the fjord. It happened to take place on exactly the one night of the summer when a storm (remnants of Hurricane Irene in fact) blew into Oslo, causing flooding and all sorts of other problems. We did sail out on the fjord though—the trip was not cancelled. We stayed more or less on the inner fjord, so the waves were not very high. The boat was quite large so it was actually not a problem to be out on the water. But the wind whipped the sails about and the rain was unrelenting, so we were forced into the boat’s innards where dinner awaited, and that was cozy. People had a good time and that was the most important thing. I know that the foreigners at the meeting will remember this particular trip. It’s not often you get to sail on a boat during a fairly intense storm.

It was heartening to meet a lot of the scientists who were at this conference. For some reason, most of the top scientists who attended were actually quite down-to-earth people—friendly, interested in others, and interesting to talk to. It made me wonder about the correlation between real intelligence and humility. If you are really intelligent, perhaps you don’t need to flaunt it or to treat other people poorly. So perhaps this is one explanation for what I see in my workplace—several rude people who think they are intelligent (but who really are not), and who need to be arrogant and rude to others because they are insecure about their intelligence. They need to make others feel inferior in order for them to feel superior. Kind of makes sense to me now. This has been reinforced for me by some of the lecturers I have had the privilege of listening to at the Science library at the University of Oslo. They have been given by some really incredible human beings, people you’d be proud to know. This gives me hope for the future of science generally.

At the mercy of the weather

I’ve been following the TV and internet news for information about Hurricane Irene and when she will hit the east coast of the USA and New York City. Predictions are for tonight and tomorrow morning in New York. I am hearing from friends who live in NYC, who are evacuating the city as I write this. My friend Gisele, who lives on Long Beach on Long Island, left for the ‘mainland’ yesterday. New York City may close down its subway system (historic) and hundreds of thousands of people have been urged to evacuate. As I wrote to my friend Bernadette, it’s heartening to see the preparedness on the part of city officials—they are taking the hurricane warnings seriously and in doing so, have probably saved some lives. And even if the hurricane gets degraded yet again to a storm, it is still good that everyone took the warnings seriously. Because you can never know how intense a storm it might end up as.

There have been some intense storms in Norway of hurricane-like intensity, but they occur mostly on the west coast of Norway, a part of Norway that faces out toward the open sea (Atlantic Ocean). I cannot remember a really intense storm in Oslo since I moved here; by intense I mean over 100 mph winds combined with sheeting torrential rain. In recent years, we’ve had more torrential rainstorms (a result of global warming?), that’s for sure. We’ve also had a few severe hailstorms in the summertime, with accompanying drastic drops in temperature. We have been out on our boat during summer storms that suddenly come out of nowhere and turned the fjord into a black churning mess of froth and high waves that scared the dickens out of me. That has happened to us twice; one time we managed to find safe refuge ‘behind’ an island that bore the brunt of the storm from the front side. The other time we made it back to port in the nick of time. I am insistent during such times that we don’t try to make it back to port unless we are so close that we can manage it within five minutes or so. That is what happened to us the last time we got caught in a storm; we made it back to port and then all hell broke loose. It was cozy to be inside the boat, I’ll give you that, but only because I knew the alternative would be to be out fighting the wind and waves and that is not a good feeling.

I like calm oceans and peaceful skies—glassy water surfaces, few waves, no storms, clear blue skies, a gentle warm breeze. In other words, I am not a real sailor. I only want to be on the water when it’s behaving. I have no desire to cross an ocean in a boat unless it is the size of a cruise ship. Boats do sink, just like planes do crash. Rogue waves do exist and can cause problems for boats. But it is the unpredictability of the weather in the world that gives me pause. I must say that I am amazed at how many people traveled to and from Europe (to the USA for example) by boat years ago before plane travel took over. They endured storms and winds, seasickness and all the rest. I don’t get seasick as a rule, although there have been several times when on board an ocean ferry on the way to Denmark that the long slow rolling waves got to me. I found myself a Coke to settle my stomach and the trip went on. There was no way I could get off the ferry if I had wanted to. I remember being on the Oslo fjord (west side) off the coast of Stavern (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=oslo+fjord+map&gs_upl=4104l4587l0l4896l4l4l0l0l0l0l221l662l0.3.1l4l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&biw=1440&bih=775&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x464148f14761d749:0x35b0a920dd1737fd,Oslofjord&ei=RuZYTvqsHofvsgaf0vXICg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q8gEwAA) back in 1999, and there is a part of the ocean there that is just wild—huge waves, choppy water, in short, very unpredictable and very scary to navigate in a small boat (even a 35-foot long boat like we have). I have to say that I was of no help on that trip; the waves terrified me and panic set in. Luckily my husband is a seasoned sailor and copes with situations like that. I just did as I was told—battened down the hatches and then found myself a small space on the floor of the boat and prayed as the waves washed over the top of the boat. I prayed that the boat would not lose power. Motor stops are the worst thing that can happen to a boat, just like in a plane, because then the wind and waves will move the boat toward land and then you can end up smashed upon the rocky shore. This year, my husband and his friends returned by boat from a blues festival in Notodden, and they had to navigate through the same area off the coast of Stavern. And this year they had intense waves to deal with, as they sailed through the area shortly before a storm was predicted for that area. That is the thing I don’t like about being out on the ocean. What happens if you get caught in a storm?

This year on my annual trip to the USA, the plane from Oslo to Newark was delayed by four hours due to a tornado watch along the northeast coast of the USA the previous evening that delayed all planes leaving for Europe that particular evening. As it turned out, they found another plane to get us to Newark, but it made me think how fragile and inconsequential our lives really are in the context of the weather. How dependent we are upon the weather to travel, to get where we’re going, especially if we are traveling long distances. Commercial passenger planes have enough to deal with in terms of turbulence without adding tornadoes and hurricanes to the mix. Boats have storms, high winds and high waves to contend with. Both are dependent upon accurate reporting of weather systems, turbulence, wind strength and so much more. I am thankful for modern transportation that gets us where we want to go, but it’s not without its perils. Luckily, the perils are infrequent, but when they happen, they make me remember the past and consider how many people probably lost their lives years ago due to the lack of such systems. We have come a long way, but we need to come even longer in our constant battle with the elements. Because I have a gut feeling that global warming is only going to lead to more storms, more flooding, stronger winds, higher waves and more turbulence. And since we probably won’t let those things stop us, we’ll just have to learn to better navigate around them.