Weather report!

Winter is such an exciting time here at Riverview! You never know when the water will freeze or thaw. Today, it thawed. But it was a narrow victory!

For about a week now, the long-term weather forecast has said that Saturday afternoon the temperature would rise rapidly to above the freezing point. That seemed almost too good to be true. I did not want to get my hope up. Last winter there were several such false starts. This is no miracle, for Norway has had a couple decades of mild winters. Naturally the models we use now are based on those years, and not on the temperature nosedive leading up to last year and this. It is as if we are in a different zone now, with less hot summers and colder winters.

So I was not surprised to see that the thermometer stayed below zero (Celsius, where zero is conveniently the freezing point of water). But it crept fairly close. By now it is like -1.3 or so, milder than the forecast from earlier today. And mild enough, it turns out, for the water to begin moving again. The water pipes seem to run in the ground under the house, and some heat is leaking down from the house into the ground. It was like that last year too: The pipes did not freeze until around -4, and thawed at around -2.  The same happened now: After a few hours above -2, the water in the bathroom faucet came back: First the cold, and a bit later the hot. And finally the shower too!

I had hoped to get to shower again before Christmas, and that wish has now been fulfilled. A rather chilly shower, but a real shower. Ah, the luxuries of civilization!

I’ll try to keep the faucets dripping. Hopefully it will become second nature eventually. There is nothing I can do about the shower, it does not have a drip mode. It is on/off, really, although I can vary the pressure within certain limits. Not enough to keep the hot water from running out if I leave it on overnight though.  So I enjoy it while it lasts.

I hope you have a wonderful time as well! But if not, tell me about your problems and I will give you unwanted advice instead of sympathy. That’s what men do, or so I have read. ^_^