Hej,
I’ve seen the Northern Lights twice in my life.
Once, by chance, in Aberdeen as I was driving home from work.
The second time near Uppsala last year, after I had downloaded every app there was (and even written a guide to how to spot the Northern Lights, in true spirit of a new fan believing they’re an expert), my phone buzzing every time the geomagnetic activity did whatever it is the geomagnetic activity does.
This week, when they were visible in pretty much all of Sweden several nights in a row, from north to south, I completely missed them and slept through it all.
So I was grateful (and just a tad jealous) when we asked The Local’s readers to send in your best pictures of the Northern Lights and a lot of you responded.
We shared some of their snaps in this article, but here’s another one, taken by Ruslan Hvostikov in Stockholm. That’s Stockholm City Hall with the Northern Lights visible as a green light in the background. Really beautiful:
Spring is here in southern Sweden where The Local’s editorial team is based. I’m always conflicted this time of the year – as much as I love the warmth of the sun after a long winter, it is also worrying when spring arrives earlier and earlier every year.
Here in the south, spring has been brought forward by around two to three weeks over the past few decades (Sweden tends to measure the seasons by temperature rather than date – it’s spring when the average daily temperature stays above freezing for a week).
Several of meteorological agency SMHI’s weather stations – including Malmö, Helsingborg and Karlskrona – by that definition even went straight from autumn to spring. Temperatures just never dropped to winter levels, which means that on the hand-picked date of February 15th, we officially decide that it’s now spring and not autumn.
February was warmer than normal across Sweden, according to weather agency SMHI, and in northern Norrland temperatures were 3-6C above normal levels in 1991-2020.
The warmest day in February was recorded in Karlshamn, southern Sweden, where the mercury climbed to 11.6C on February 11th. The coldest temperature was -35C, in Nikkaluokta on February 4th and Naimakka on the 22nd – both in northern Sweden.
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