by Inge Juszak
Kytalyk, August 5, 2013
Today it’s finally my turn to write a blog entry. I changed the topic from “The 14 most urgent things to do before we leave” to “The weather in Kytalyk this summer”. “Up and running” would also be a good title. But let’s stick to the weather. It’s quite a nice topic as I can make a blog entry with lots of pictures. Let’s start with the temperature. It has been really cold for most of the time, maximum between 10 and 15°C, so I usually take my down jacket to go for breakfast, lunch or dinner in the dining room. Lena cooks in her part of the building so that the dining room has the same temperature as outside, just with less wind. The temperature sensors of my little stations recorded a maximum of 26°C on 11th of July. That day was really nice and warm, but two days later the maximum daily temperature was just 7°C. So it changes rather quickly, but bad weather seems to be more stable than good weather. Cool temperatures have the advantage of less mosquitos and it is even better if there is also some wind. I can say that each weather has an advantage. Only rain is not very good for most measurements, but we had an extremely dry summer this year. It hardly rained and usually just 0mm (as the weather forecast says).
During the first half of our stay in Kytalyk we had a lot of wind, but much less in the last couple of weeks. With no wind at all the river looks like a mirror. We had a wonderful evening and I took the picture below of the boat coming back from a little trip. It’s Lena and some guests from Chokurdakh who were here for few days.
Most amazing about the weather in Kytalyk are the clouds. They change very quickly and ten minutes can make a big difference. The funny thing about the clouds here is that they seem to be very close. It looks as if you just need to stand on the nearest pingo to touch them.
Most beautiful are the clouds in the midnight sun. Even now, the sun is still above the horizon at midnight. I take a picture every day before going to bed and usually the view is great.
The summer here is already coming to an end, the nights get colder and we got the first frost. The first shrubs have turned into nice colours, the birches have started getting red and the willows yellow. It will still take some time, but we can already see some changes. I really hoped for the cloudberries to be ripe before we leave, but I think they will not make it in the next 3 days. Well, maybe next year!