It was my 42th birthday today.

My mother always tells how cold it was when I was born. It was more than -20°C, which was cold but not so unusual in the late 70ies in Finland in January.

Today I received as a birthday present a trip to woods. It was unusually bright and sunny day. Also a bit colder than it has been this winter: I think maybe -1°C, because there was some ice on the surface of the puddles. Also a few snowflakes in the air, allthough I don´t know where they came since there were no clouds in the sky or where they went since they did not stay on the ground.

It feels it has been raining all the winter. Maybe a hint of snow once or twice, but it has melted before the next day. We have had black winters before also, but this ongoing rain and temperature which has been mostly over 5 degrees feels like something else. Weird. One novelty that the climate change brings is that weather types remain the same longer than they used to, said meteorologist Petteri Taalas in some interview.