Finally, we got some snow here. At least for the few days… the sad truth is that the 15 days forecast shows + degrees (Celsius) for the whole period. So, we had a taste of winter for a short time. The two previous winters have been exceptionally warm here and I guess this one won’t break this pattern. It really seems to me that southern Scandinavia is one of the real losers in the climate change. Our winters will probably start to resemble those of Holland, Belgium and British Isles.

Anyway, it also seems that the bursts of snow and cold that come in the form of furious north wind for a couple of days are then really intensive. Last weekend, just for two days, one could imagine living in Siberia here in Helsinki. It snowed some 30-40cm (over one foot) and for a while it looked like in the good old times. In the 80s when I was a kid we used to have real winters from late November to early April, and usually periods of really cold weather around January and February – in last year the average temperature of February was something like +5C!

The short cold periods also allowed our little  ski resorts to open some of their slopes. But at the moment it doesn’t look too good, and the resorts will be probably forced to close their slopes again (bummer). However, I took an advantage of the situation and opened the season. Nothing more than few runs on a slightly tilted field with minimal snow (it has started to melt big time already) and few very unsure attempts on some “pressure boxes”. At the age of 35 it is pretty humbling to go try jibbing among masses of teenagers that know what they are doing and are almost all pretty damn good, or at least it looks so to my eye. Still, Season opener is a season opener and every day skiing is better than a day at the office.

Snowy conditions offered some interesting commuting to work too – suddenly all the usual bike lanes changed to perfect winter cyclocross tracks. I’d say riding in conditions like that all winter would make anyone a way better bike handler (especially without studded tires). Another reason to hope for some real winters to come back again in the future!

The wild rumor also said that newschool mega-stars Andreas Harlaut, Tom Wallish and Norwegian Even Sigstad were hitting some rails in Helsinki yesterday. I am not 100% sure about this statement, but the word was from a reliable source though. I guess the guys came a few days too late anyway…there are still piles of rotten and dirty snow everywhere but they’ve missed the beautiful winter scenery with virgin snow around.

I hope the guys got some good footage and enjoyed their time in Helsinki? Last winter Helsinki didn’t see many days of snow and even Redbull organized cool competition “Jibs and Clips” was moved to Jyväskylä (in Central Finland).  The competition was very well organized and offered world class urban jibs, and I wonder why it didn’t get any more international attention? See the clip below…the format was super (a team of Jibbers and a camera crew shooting footage together) and I guess our riders here are not that bad either? I hope we will see footage like this from my hometown in the next year’s flicks?

Well, waiting here for the real winter still to come. It was nice to enjoy snow for a few days and I hope this winter will see more snow than the last one – when we got about two ordinary storms in the  whole season, one in November and one in March. All January and February was pure rain, all the time. The positive side is that this winter just could not be any worse? (or then we really are the losers in the climate game already?).