Oslo: winter, but no snow ...

There is not so much walking in this #walkwithme post, mostly just photos from my own neighbourhood, over two mornings and one evening. Winter is definitively here, the last days we've had cold temperatures, between -5C and -10C. The first morning it was very humid and foggy, the next morning it was sunny.

There is something white outside, but it's not snow ... at least, not in the Norwegian language. We would use the word "rim" - by googling "frozen dew" I came over the proper English name for it: hoar. While the physical phenomena is very well known to me, the English word was not. I was talking about climate with a Tamil later the same evening, it was a bit funny - he experiences the Oslo climate as "dry", while I claimed it was "humid". Well, I must admit that the average relative humidity at Sri Lanka probably is a lot higher than in Oslo in the summer time, and also that the absolute humidity is a lot higher there, but they for sure have no hoar.

To be fair, a great deal of the white stuff on the ground has actually formed in the air and fallen down - but the ice crystals was formed in the fog, few meters above the ground, not in clouds far above our heads. Maybe it's technically "snow" and not "hoar" if the crystallization happens in the air? Honestly, I don't know - I don't believe we had much of that in my hometown of Tromsø (ice crystals formed in low altitude air at low temperatures). There are two major differences from "real snow", the particles are very small, and there isn't a lot of them.

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.956966,10.892045 (geohack) - 2018-11-23 08:42:01 localtime - full quality

The neighbour down to the right on the below photo has a very steep hill from his house up to the road, it can be very difficult getting a car up and down in the winter time. During the last few weeks he has been working on installing electric heating cables - he's still not completely done, hence the mess on the right side of the road.

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.956966,10.892045 (geohack) - 2018-11-23 08:42:07 localtime - full quality

Such overalls as on the photo below are used by almost every kinder garden child in Norway in the winter time, and often in the shoulder seasons as well, typically with long woolen underwear under, and combined with mittens, a scarf, a warm hat and winter boots. It's quite practical not to have openings between the jacket and trousers when playing outdoors in the winter time, and also quite practical not to have to think about too many pieces of clothes when going out. On the flip-side toilet errainds for the girls are difficult, and it's also impractical when one moves between hot and cold zones, i.e. visiting a restaurant. Shoes have to go off when taking the suit on and off. For maximum comfort one shouldn't have anything under except for woolen underwear - but when taking it off in social settings, it's best to have some "nice" clothes over the underwear. Our eldest boy was mostly playing around indoors in the kinder garden in only woolen underwear, though I feel it's less appropriate now that we've moved to Oslo - our daughter is a bit obsessed with wearing nice clothes, and it would be quite inappropriate to walk around at school in only woolen underwear ... so, it can be quite stressful being a parent in the winter time - it's needed to keep order on lots of clothes, find it during stressful mornings, help the children to dress ... the one-piece helps a bit, but there is still quite many pieces to keep order on, the warm underwear, mittens, scarfs, hats, indoor clothing, spares of everything, things should be washed and dried, and multiply that with the number of children.

Previous winter I was quite often out in the dhingy, using a similar piece of clothing myself (but specially crafted for surviving when falling into the sea - relatively water tight and with built-in floating elements). I'm sweating a lot and need to undress - often even when taking a train or a bus, and I also like visiting coffee shops and cafés ... it was pretty hard.

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.956966,10.892045 (geohack) - 2018-11-23 08:42:11 localtime - full quality

The fog made this night time photo quite spectacular. I'm curious on what kind of effect made the lights smear out vertically. It's not a photograph artifact, I could see it with my own eyes as well. I first thought it could be the artificially lightning intentionally or unintentionally pointing upwards causing such an effect ... but there is a bit of vertical smear around the moon as well. Some ice particles can be seen in the air close to the phone (like, the moon-alike particle above the moon).

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.955715,10.891971 (geohack) - 2018-11-23 17:29:14 localtime - full quality

There is quite some time since my last #walkwithme post. Rest assured it has nothing to do with the Steem price slump to do - the earnings from my posts was anyway insignificant compared to the time cost of producing them. It's just that I usually don't take photos in the darkness, and that I don't have much energy for #walkwithme posts those days anyway.

The above photo was taken 17:30 in the afternoon - and it's already dark. November and December can be quite hard, if staying at work for a full workday, it may be dark when going there and dark when going home. It can affect the mood a lot, one sleeps more, feels more sleepy in the daytime (if I remember right, according to a study done in the 50s, the inuits would in average sleep some 14 hours pr day in the winter time), depressions are more normal winter time than summer time. Still, at least it's physically possible to see the sun even in the middle of the winter - at my earlier home town Tromsø in the far north we had two months with the sun permanently below the horizon - and maybe a week extra without sun due to the sun still hiding behind the mountains. Snow, or at least white ground can help a lot on the mood - darkness combined with black, wet, dirty, salty roads is for sure no fun.

Back here in Oslo, we had a nice sunny Saturday morning yesterday ...

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.957416,10.892205 (geohack) - 2018-11-24 09:02:17 localtime - full quality

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.957271,10.892038 (geohack) - 2018-11-24 09:18:05 localtime - full quality

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.956802,10.89214 (geohack) - 2018-11-24 09:18:37 localtime - full quality

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.956802,10.89214 (geohack) - 2018-11-24 09:18:42 localtime - full quality

Bonus photo from downtown, sunshine on the church and library.

Photo taken by tobixen
position: geo:59.916297,10.744444 (geohack) - 2018-11-24 10:17:04 localtime - full quality

Selected photos available in original quality on IPFS QmW6cgbcJegpQga8LFghiyt9f5oJFHt8p8snUH4tYiYbPB. All photos taken available in original quality on IPFS Qmaf71TE4zwu1QjhPT621ceNDYfLMqKfoTTuL1MEd5v945. The CC BY-SA 4.0 license applies on both my photos and the article


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