Weather permitting (säävarauksella)
This post was written in the summer 2020, a year before the freakish weather events across the Northern Hemisphere of summer 2021.
I am writing this in the middle of summer in Finland, Helsinki to be exact, where the summer nights are long and the winter days even longer. As the local saying goes: the summer is short but at least it doesn’t snow much (Suomen kesä on lyhyt mutta vähäluminen). This means that every outdoor event will need a plan for having to literally take a rain check in case it, well, rains. Or hails. Or snows. You will often see the text säävarauksella (weather permitting) in outdoor terrace cafe opening times, garden party invites and sightseeing tour itineraries.
I wish there was snow
The same phrase is less prominent during the consistently dark, cold and snowy 5 months between November and March. Or at least that used to be the case, however last winter was very different. December 2019 saw 3–6 degrees higher than average temperatures everywhere apart from Lapland, and remained abnormally warm through the entire winter. The local Extinction Rebellion chapter, Elokapina, illustrated this with their brilliant campaign of swimming in the ice-free Baltic Sea in February, holding signs for ‘Climate Emergency’, ‘I’d rather be skiing’, ‘Do you miss the winter? So do we!’ and ‘I wish there was snow’.
Seasonal and year-to-year variation has of course always existed, and climate and weather are not synonyms. Climate describes what the weather is like over a long period of time in a specific area. As the saying goes, climate is what you expect while weather is what you get. Still, changing climate does mean more extreme weather and greater unpredictability in the weather you’re expecting to have at any given time. Somewhere this unpredictability in the winter time results in minor feelings of annoyance when skiing is cancelled, whereas in other places the disruption is more fundamental.
The winter is not coming
The Northern hemisphere is full of alarming examples of shifting climate. The thawing permafrost in Siberia is a growing concern. The ground beneath the locals’ feet is literally melting away, shaking up foundations of buildings and disrupting farming and reindeer herding traditions. This combined with poorly managed infrastructure can lead to disastrous events, such as the collapse of a fuel tank in the Arctic, leaking 20,000 tons of diesel into a nearby river. Shorter and milder winters in turn lead to flooding, stranding some communities and washing away others.
Not too far from there, The Eskimo-Aleut language family famously have over 50 words for snow. What happens to the language when there’s nothing left to describe and the magic of white and glistening landscapes only exists in tales and folklore? You’re left feeling disoriented, missing something you never quite had.
Covid cancelled this year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and the next scheduled event are the Winter Olympics in Beijing 2022. Given how 2020 so far has unfolded, no one should even pretend to know what the world will be dealing with at that point. As a trend though, winter sports are under a growing threat because of rainier, shorter or altogether missed winters. And this is not just about people’s recreational needs and wants — skiing, snowboarding and other associated activities and tourism are a multibillion industry globally.
Others are haunted by images of melting glaciers and polar bears on their endless swims in search of ice to rest on. Certain parts of the world feel like they are the polar bear.
Some people mourn the loss of a snowboarding season, while others are haunted by images of melting glaciers and polar bears on their endless swims in search of ice to rest on. Certain parts of the world feel like they are the polar bear, and the landscape they live and love on is disappearing. These are all connected with a larger, dangerous, global trend of rapid warming in both pole regions, north and south. And that is something we should all be very concerned about.
Ice cream and a walk by the beach tomorrow? Weather permitting.
Ice-free summers in the Arctic by 2050? Säävarauksella.
