Winter is Here

It is official, winter is here. But whose scientific viewpoint did I use to come to this conclusion? BBC Weather? SMHI?

No, my own eyes for I have seen the first cases of Canada Goose Jacket-wearing of the season. For the uninitiated, the Canada Goose Jacket is as perfect example of Sweden's homogenous fashion sense, where specific groups of people - of which there are few - happily wear exactly the same things. Literally. They don't just wear similar looking clothing, they wear the exact same clothing. Anyway, that's another commonly told story which you probably won't find written at this site due to it, frankly, having become somewhat old hat.

Anyway, there doesn't appear to be any variation this year, unlike the sudden appearance of the shorter "not covering the arse" model of a couple of years back. Both myself and my better half have independently confirmed reports, although me having done so on Östermalm (look, I had a good excuse for being there) slightly negates my spotting, and thus like the first cuckoo signals the return of spring, I can happily announce that days of hours of darkness, life-affirming cold and crisp, crisp snow are upon us.

Unfortunately I have no pictures of said jackets in the wild as attempting to get a decent shot could have caused a few problems, so instead I offer a sneaky shot of a really cute dog I saw a few minutes later.

Actually, whilst writing this I thought I'd check the weather prognosis and got a bit of a shock to see snow. Well, not snow snow, but sleet. That's still like snow, isn't it? Anyway, crikey and all that. Indian summer followed by an early winter. What on earth happened to autumn?

Sweden, the land of two seasons.

M Panda

Update:
It could be worse (better?). I could live up north in Kiruna. Their weather for the same day: