Snow!

We have had fantastic weather in Kiev so far this winter – sunny and warm – the total opposite of this time last year when temperatures were averaging -20C (-4F), and even got as low as -35C (-31F). So far this year, daytime temperatures have been around +10C (+50F). And it’s not just Kiev, or Ukraine even. This was the Christmas in anyone’s memory without snow in Moscow! There have been days when people only wear jackets. I haven’t put on my winter boots at all. My down coat hangs in the hallway unused this year.

So when I was awakened early this morning to a scraping sound outside, I didn’t pay much attention. I listened for a moment, then thought “Hm, that sounds like someone shoveling snow. I wonder what it really is.” Then I rolled over and went promptly back to sleep (and deep into a strange dream about the neighborhood where I grew up, but that’s another story). When I actually got up later in the morning and looked out the window, I was so surprised to see the ground was white! It really had been someone shoveling snow! We got a good 4-5 cm (2″) of snow overnight, and it’s below freezing for the first time this year (about -5C, +23F).

I haven’t been complaining at all about the warm weather, I’ll take it any day over the kind of winter we had last year. But I am happy to finally get to wear some of my nice winter sweaters! And another plus is that the temperature in my apartment might finally be comfortable. You see, most older buildings in Ukraine (and throughout the former Soviet Union) have a centralized heating system, and I can’t regulate the temperature in my apartment. Most buildings are poorly heated and many of my friends live in really cold apartments. I, on the other hand, live one of the rare buildings that seems to be both properly insulated and well-supplied with heat. I wear shorts and a t-shirt when I’m home, and even then I often (guiltily) open a window or the door onto the enclosed balcony. The cat especially likes it when the balcony door is open, as the poor thing is nearly suffocating from the heat, so she likes to sit out on the balcony windowsills, cools off, and when she’s good and cold she comes back inside to sit on my lap until she’s toasty again (yeah, she’s a bit weird). Anyway, I also don’t complain that my building is well-heated, as the alternative is far worse. But these past few weeks, with unseasonably warm temperatures and no regulation of the heating, it’s been uncomfortably warm inside.

So it looks all that will be changing. They are predicting temperatures in the minus teens C (+4 to -4F) starting next week. Winter has finally arrived.