Category: Weather Reports

Winter came much earlier this year. We had a major snowfall in early December that left us with a snow cover that the previous year had only appeared at the end of January. It is also brought with the coldest period we had during this winter – a few days where temperatures dropped below -15c.

We had 3 or 4 more note-worthy snow falls throughout December, January and February but for the most part this winter felt dry – as if the previous season’s drought continued throughout the winter. The snow did not accumulate to the levels it had the previous winter. February, usually the coldest winter month, was unusually warm (one time I was outside cutting wood wearing a short-sleeved shirt on a sunny day).

Snow melted fairly early – I think that by late february most of the snow was gone and signs of new green grasses emerged. Even the bees (from the surviving hive) came out for a look around a couple of weeks ago.

My consciousness switched into a spring-ish mode and was caught off-guard by a couple of really cold-weather waves that appeared in March. During the previous weekend there was another substantial snowfall … enough to cover EVERYTHING with a white blanket … but it mostly disappeared after a couple of days.

It’s only my second winter here at Bhudeva and the signs of climate change are very clear. Regardless of overall warming the weather is becoming much less stable, much less predictable and much more prone to extreme shifts. It takes only one, short, local extreme weather event (drought, late frost, hail …) to wipe out traditional crop-systems. It is a stark reminder to me how important deep infrastructures (water and soil fertility) filled with bio-diversity are in meeting this given instability (which is very likely to continue for a long time even if we were to start drastic global regenerative actions today … which doesn’t seem likely to happen).

As Cutia Taranului is coming to life again amidst these shifting and unpredictable weather patterns I find myself immersed in both satisfaction (because of how successful it has been and promises to continue to be) and concern (because of the knowledge that the traditional methods of agriculture used by most peasant families are fragile and unsustainable).

I am not sure this post will be of much interest to others readers. It is intended more of a short documentation of weather patterns for us to reference in future years. I am writing it now because we are seeing a clear transition into spring and it seems worth noting.

Winter started early with a 2+ week wave of frozen tempretaures (everything outside frosted white) in late October. It was very cold and dry – we didn’t get much rain neither in the summer nor in the autumn. At first it felt like we skipped over autumn directly into winter but then the temperatures went up again – drastically. It was surprsinginly pleasant outside and we were gifted with more days of work … we worked all the way up to Christmas eve … and still there was no snow.

There were only occassional days of sunshine in December and January, more, though still relatively few, in February. I do not recall how it was during November.

Snows came in January and while other of Romania were covered by snow we had a pleasant snowfall. I think that in the open undisturbed fields it accumulated to ~70cm.

Spring emerged suddenly a week ago (~Feb 21) when we awoke to windows without any ice and drastically warmer temperatures. At first with some sunshine and on the 3rd day we had full sunshine.  We were told that temperatures reached as high as 10c. There were signs of snow-melting all around. Then, after the sunshine, came two frozen days … ice on the windows and on the door handle.

Today we had partly cloudy weather and it became windy. The levels of accumulated are definitely coming down. Most of the south-facing land is already completely melted and the view that was white is now brown. All of the rest of the fields are still snow-white and areas around the house are a mixture of snow, slush and mud.