Winter Preview

It is not unusual in Brasov and especially on the higher mountains around to get a few snow flakes during the autumn. But not so early, so much and at such a low altitude. The thick clouds are continuously pouring now for more than 48 hours. It started with rain on Sunday night. Then it got gradually colder. Yesterday morning (Tuesday the 1st of October), the rain transformed into heavy snow. It snowed heavily in Brasov for the whole day. Towards the evening it got a bit warmer and the snow flakes transformed back into rain drops. Now, on Wednesday morning it is still raining!

I measured 7cm of very heavy and watery snow on my roof! If it was light powder snow, it would have measured 4 times more... And if all the rain was snow, the town would have been buried under a thick blanket of snow... The skier in me is dreaming!

I am a bit concerned about the conditions for the Saturday's Piatra Craiului Marathon. It looks like we will have snow on the route this year. The weather is getting warmer and the soil is still quite warm, so I do not expect the snow to last for too long. But it also depends on how much it was snowing in Piatra Craiului Mountains... The marathon route gets close to 2000m above sea level, with the most technical section of the route above 1500m.

Update - 3rd of october 2012. The weather got in fact colder. Still a few more snow flakes today. Above 800m it is real winter! For safety reasons, the Saturday's Piatra Craiului Marathon was postponed to 2nd of November. The weather should now gradually get warmer and sunnier. But there is a lot of snow on the mountains and it will not melt too fast, especially that it is going to freeze during the nights as the sky will become clear next days.

For the moment, here are some photos I took yesterday (1st of Oct. 2013) in Brasov, in the picturesque Schei District where I live and work.