Taps began to play at 10:58. Everything else goes silent. Only the breeze and a single trumpet can be heard. And then at the eleventh hour, not even the wind makes a sound.

At that moment a freight train rolled through the village. For the full two minutes of silence the only sound was the undeniable melody of train moving at a constant rhythm. Finally the sound fades off in distance and time. And then, the single trumpet sings again.

Suddenly the sun came out from its heavy cloud cover.

Thank you soldier. Lest We Forget.

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BEST VIEWED IN HD AND FULLSCREEN (with scaling off)

Midnight Sun: A natural phenomenon occurring in the summer months north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle where the sun never fully sets and remains visible 24 hours a day.

This short time lapse film was shot during the Icelandic Midnight Sun in June of 2011.

………..

complete article:: Meteorologists Follow Fate of Snowdrift on Mt. Esja

Snow delays the start of summer in Iceland.

The picture of fresh snow on the lovely Mt Esja looks a lot like the picture I took in November.  That mountain is amazing and almost mystical.  It never looks the same two days in a row.

And my own:

If you can walk to it, hop on, and be downtown quickly then it’s all good.

(at 66 degrees north/south sunrise is around noon so I like to call it the Nordic Siesta.)

It is more likely that extreme weather including relentless snowfall is an effect of climate change rather than any kind of proof that all is well with mother nature. But nobody can proclaim that huge snowfalls are caused by climate change or that it is proof otherwise. Are the deniers so ignorant to think that cold days and snowflakes will never happen again or are they simply perpetuating a myth and hoping to keep everyone else ignorant? Are there opportunists on all sides of public debate? Surely there are greedy loud mouths and false prophets anywhere there is a chance to make money with face time in the arena of media and common conciseness. It isn’t about the long term path of human progress but instead is the short term goals of our own ego. A potentially hazardous game of diversion.

The Earth and nature is the only expert, we’re only trying to unlock the formula and understand how it works. Regulating a planet’s temperature range is like a giant heat pump. Weather is there to move heat. That is what a hurricane does, what a nor’easter is there for, why the weather changes and why we look to weather forecasters for what is happening. All that change and seemingly unpredictable weather is there to keep things within a range where life can survive in all its diversity. We can only push those natural capabilities just so far before that heat pump must create ever more extreme events to maintain the natural balance. When an extreme event passes over your head you might have to batten down the hatches and pick up a shovel. Complaining won’t help. Snow happens.

Sunrise today in Reykjavík is at 11:23 and sunset at 15:30 (3:30 pm).  In the northern West Fjords the sunrise is at 12:09 with sunset at 14:53 (2:53 pm).  You can bet that they will be happy to finally see more sunlight in the coming days.

So, at 17:47 coordinated universal time give a thought to the thousands of generations that came before and marked this moment as the rebirth of mankind; the new year.  To the folks in Iceland that is at 17:47/5:47PM and to those on the east coast of N.A. that moment is at 12:47.

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