Karen's Blog about her move to Bulgaria

Archive for January, 2010

Snowed in

It began to snow on Sunday 17th January 2010. 

The snow quickly settled as temperatures reached minus 24 degrees at night, and during the next 2 weeks struggled to reach more than minus 5 in the daytime.

As more snow fell and the temperature dropped the roads out of the vilage became impassible.  The snow plough came through the village each day, but made little impression on the icy road.

We were able to get aroung the village on foot and the shop/bar is only 500 metres away, so we could buy bread -an Army truck delivered fresh bread every day to the shop.  We had expected to have deep snow at some point, so we stocked up well in advance with tins of food, milk, water etc.

Ice Storm Day

20th December 2009

We woke to a clear but drizzly day.  The temperature was well beow freezing.  We decided to walk up the the village bar to buy some fresh bread and have a coffee.

As we stepped outside we were greeted by an amazing sight.  Everything was coated in a 1/2” thick ayer of ice. The car, the fence the walls the trees everything looked as though it had been dipped in some kind of plastic coating.

Tree branches were encased in ice and with the sun shining on the ice it looked for all the world as if the trees had been dressed in thousands of fairylights, all in colours of the rainbow reflected like tiny diamonds.  We have never seen a sight like this before.  It was like being in a grotto of crystal ornamental trees and plants.  Even humble weeds and bare branches were transformed into the most beautiful of sights.  We could hardly conceal our delight as we walked along the road marvelling at the transformation of ordinary structures like powercables which now resembled a string of diamonds.

We hurried back home for the camera and took some stunning shots.  Later in the afternoon we ventured out again in -10 temperatures to take more photographs.  The effect of the light from the setting sun on the ice covered trees and plants was indeed magical.  The weight of the ice had caused some of the tree branches to break and our neighbour lost one of his oldest fruit trees.

We have never seen such a spectacle, and we don’t expect to see this again as it took a series of weather conditions to create this phenomenon.