Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Pleasures of the north
Tonight since 3 am I spent all my psychic powers holding the roof onto the house. I was only partially successful, and the hurricane which blew south-west along the fjord with a deafening roar picked tiles off the roof. I need to get up there and put new ones on before the next storm, which includes several operations: I need a 10 meter ladder, new tiles since the old ceramic ones of course are cracked, and a little respite in the wind and rain while it's still daylight. Wish me luck - too much wind, and I might be Torill Poppins for about 3 seconds...

The bright side? A few more days like the last three, and the energy crisis should be over: The dams must be filling up now, and as long as the wind keeps tearing down the electricity supply to large parts of the north-west coast of Norway, we don't use much either. I can add that the falling tiles did not blow in through the windows, they were also all ripped off the edge of the roof not the center where a leak would have done real damage.

(According to this article - in Norwegian - tonight's storm wasn't really a hurricane (orkan) this far inside the fjord, since it did not sustain the required force for long enough periods - it was only hurricane strength in gusts which lasted less than 10 minutes. So I stand corrected - it was only "sterk storm" or a "strong storm". The word of the day is orkan, which means a wind with an average speed of 63 m/s for more than 10 minutes.)

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