I just got back from a five-day trip to the town of Garching, north of Munich, in Germany, where I was visiting my thesis advisor. Couldn’t I have visited her in Leiden, where her office is two doors down the hall from mine? Yes and no. Her husband, who was also a professor of astronomy in Leiden, moved to Garching a few months ago to become the new director general of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). (ESO is the organization that develops and runs major telescopes such as the VLT [images or text] and ALMA [images or text].) In order to still spend some time together, my advisor took up a part-time professorship at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), literally across the street from the ESO headquarters. The reason for my visit was that she had much more time for me this week than in any other week when we’re both in Leiden. In Garching, there simply aren’t any other students or faculty to demand her attention. (Actually, there was one: I travelled to Garching with another student from Leiden.)

The visit was scientifically successful. We pretty much got around to doing everything that we wanted to. There was also plenty of time to enjoy being in a new place and meet new people. Garching itself isn’t much of a tourist attraction, but had enough to keep us going for five days. I went to Munich itself on Thursday with my fellow traveller, and spent a couple of nice hours there.

Some further random observations:

• Travelling to Garching took some more time than expected. We were scheduled to depart Amsterdam at 11:20am on Monday, but the airplane had a delay coming in from Brussels, so we had to wait until 1:00pm. From there on, the journey went fast and smoothly.
• Travelling back from Garching took even more time. The scheduled departure time was 8:45pm, but fog and cold weather caused delays on almost all flights from Munich airport. In fact, many flights were cancelled. We took off with another 90-minute delay and landed in Amsterdam at half past midnight. The luggage came slowly, so we missed the 1:00am train to Leiden and had to wait for the next one at 2:00am. Of course, when we got to Leiden at 2:20, there were no buses anymore, so I had to walk for another fifteen minutes to get home. In hindsight, we should have just taken a taxi from the airport and reclaimed the fare from the Observatory as travel expenses. Oh well… it was a lovely night for a walk.
• The VLT is located in Chili’s Atacama desert, a very dry and barren place all year around. In winter, the surroundings of the ESO headquarters are almost as barren. The difference is in colour: Atacama has red sand, Garching has brownish grey farmlands.
• The ticket machines for the Munich subway don’t accept credit cards or 50-euro notes. On Thursday, that made for some difficulty in getting from the MPE into Munich. I only had two 50-euro notes and some coins, but not enough to pay the 11.80 euro two-way, two-person fare. My fellow traveller was almost out of cash. Of course, there were no ATMs near the MPE, or anyone to change a 50-euro note into smaller units. We ended up walking back to Garching proper to get smaller change at a supermarket. Our advisor just happened to be there as well, and she was very surprised to still see us in Garching.
• It never got above freezing while we were in Garching, marking the longest period of sub-zero weather I’ve been in in quite a few years. It was nice to endure some real winter weather again.
• I’ve heard from a reliable source where the finale of the next James Bond film will be shot. It’s supposed to be a secret, though, so I’ll not divulge any details. Okay, just this one: it’s not Garching!
• A seagull just came swimming backwards through the canal in front of my appartment. It looked very odd, but I’m sure it had a good reason for doing it.

It’s snowing!

Not in Leiden, obviously, but it is on the Königstuhl mountain next to the city of Heidelberg, Germany. Near the top of this 567-metre high mountain (1859 ft.) lies the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), where I’m visiting a colleague for a week.

We already got some snow yesterday morning, but at only half an inch, it wasn’t too exciting. The more interesting bit yesterday was the dense fog hovering over the upper part of the mountain. The clouds were hanging so low that they covered the MPIA, and much of the Königstuhl, like a thick grey blanket. With visibility down to about 50 metres (160 ft.), the bus driver must have had a hard time hauling his vehicle up the slopes. Making it even tougher is the fact that some of the roads are essentially single lane, and the bus can only pass oncoming traffic at specific passing places. That can be tricky already in clear weather. Fortunately, no accidents occurred.

This morning, as we started up the mountain, there was quite a bit of white visible amongst the greens and browns of the forest at the top. Ascending further, it turned out to be a lot more than yesterday. A good four inches had fallen overnight, making for a truly beautiful landscape. The road was still in good condition, as it had been well cleared and salted. The clouds are hanging higher than yesterday, so I have a great view from my office now. It’s a shame I have to work today.

Today Leiden probably got the worst rain showers since I moved here nearly two years ago. I had the good fortune of having to bike through some of them. Although hardly dry, it wasn’t too bad yet in the morning when I went to work. It wasn’t pouring down hard either when I rode home tonight. But in between, that’s where the real fun was.

I had a meeting with the parents from one of our baseball club’s youth teams at six, at the baseball field across town from where I work. It’s only about two miles, but it got me soaked thoroughly. It had been raining throughout most of the afternoon, with the storm really picking up around five. By the time I set out, several streets were flooded, with the water sometimes standing more than four inches high even on the pavement.

I turned into one of those streets and poorly underestimated the length of the submerged stretch. At previous streets, I just pulled up my feet and let my momentum carry me through. In this case, I got nowhere close to reaching dry land, so I did the only thing I could do: bring my feet back onto the pedals and carry on, even though that meant submerging my feet at every turn of the pedals. At least I didn’t have to watch where I went anymore for the rest of the trip.

Of course, it was also rush hour at that time, and the heavy rains were badly affecting traffic. Several cars got stuck when the water disabled their engines. Repair services had a hard time getting to them because of all the traffic jams.

But it wasn’t just cars and people that got wet. A fellow grad student had water at all three levels of his apartment. It was seeping in from the street into the ground-floor hallway, leaking through the roof into his third-floor bedroom, and dripping down from the bedroom into his second-floor living room. I hope nothing important got damaged. I was lucky enough that no water got into my apartment.

After the meeting with the parents, I went back downtown for a barbecue with fellow graduate and undergrad students. The people in charge had set up a party tent to keep the grill and the cooks dry, and the rest of the party took place indoors. That worked very well, and we had a good time.

To give you some idea of what things looked like, here are two pictures I pulled from the Dutch news site nu.nl:

We live in a strange world. Normally, not a week goes by in the Netherlands without rain. The winter this year was particularly wet, with hardly a dry day until mid-March. The weather turned around on March 22nd, bringing lots of sunshine and high temperatures. Hardly a drop of rain has fallen since, giving rise to one of the longest dry spells in the Netherlands in recorded weather history. The drought ended yesterday with some mild showers, and today we plunged straight into the other extreme: the amount of rain expected for today is half of what normally falls in the entire month of May. I guess Mother Nature stocked up for a month and a half and is now going to unload her entire supply in a few days.

The letter above was printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of April 16th. Picked up by weblogs around the world, a colleague of mine noticed it and sent it along. A couple of observations:

• Contrary to what was reported on most blogs, Mr. Meskimen was not serious when he wrote this letter. That is, he apparently has a history of writing satirical letters, so it’s safe to assume this is just another one.
• Satire aside, the idea that Congress managed to get the sun to shine for an extra hour each day is hilarious.
• What, exactly, got exacerbated by starting DST a month earlier? Global warning? The Democrat-Gazette’s editors should be applauded for publishing this letter, but they should be slapped around for not noticing the difference between an n and an m.

There was a total lunar eclipse last night, but the moon was almost eclipsed too much. The sky had been going from almost fully clear to almost fully overcast and back throughout the afternoon and early evening. No one knew for sure whether the moon would be visible during the eclipse, which would last from 10.30pm to 2.11 am, with the total phase occurring between 11.44pm and 0.58am.

We got a good start, with only a few scattered clouds at 10.30pm. The shadow of the Earth was clearly visible on the moon’s lower left, slowly creeping across the rest of the surface. I was out with my bike, camera and tripod, trying to get a few pictures in between the clouds, and meanwhile riding around looking for a good (dark) location to catch the total phase from. That brought me to parts of Leiden I’d never been before, including what I later discovered to be a bike racing track.

With some ten minutes to go before totality (where the moon is entirely in the Earth’s shadow), I set up my tripod on an empty parking lot just outside the city limits. The illuminated part of the moon continued to shrink and shrink and shrink… and then disappeared entirely.

Behind a pack of clouds.

At 11.42pm, two minutes before totality, a seemingly endless stretch of clouds came in from the west and obscured the moon. I felt robbed. Granted, a lunar eclipse is not nearly as spectacular as a solar eclipse, but I’d never seen one before (contrary to a solar eclipse; I saw the 1999 total eclipse in Belgium) and I was looking forward to seeing the moon turn a dark brownish red. Alas, no such luck. To make matters worse, it started raining and I had wondered off quite far from home. I was soaked to my underpants by the time I got back, but I wasn’t about to give up just yet.

The rain subsided a bit, so I changed into a dry jacket and a dry pair of shoes, and went out again. Before long it had stopped raining again and the clouds got a bit thinner. Eventually they broke altogether and I got a ten-minute window to behold the fully eclipsed, dark red moon. After that the clouds returned and it started raining again, but I didn’t care. I’d seen the eclipse.

The partially eclipsed moon at 11.04, 11.14 and 11.30pm (40, 30 and 14 minutes before totality) and the fully eclipsed moon at 0.39am (55 minutes into the 74-minute total phase). The poor quality is due to the limited capabilities of my camera.

Clouds came in again around 0.45am to make the rest of the eclipse invisible from Leiden.

Whatever those birds were doing yesterday, it wasn’t migrating. The sky was again filled with them as I got home today, so I grabbed my camera to get another few shots. I’m adding two in this post and I’ve put the rest in my photo gallery.

A man walking his dog noticed my interest in the birds and he was able to answer a few questions. The birds are starlings, which are very common in the Netherlands from spring to autumn, but shouldn’t be here this time of year. However, with the mild winter we’ve had, they never migrated south, and apparently that’s made them all restless. They spend most of the day in relative quiet, only to come out an hour or so before sunset to flutter and fly and swoop around like crazy. After sunset they all settle in a couple of trees to spend the night, and life repeats the next day. This has been going on for a few weeks now.

So, add starlings to the list of evidence that nature gets upset by global warming. A colleague already saw ducks mating last week, goats and sheep were born at the Amsterdam goat farm even earlier than that, and flowers are already beginning to bloom. I thought everything was early last year, but it’s even worse now.

Anyway, in addition to static pictures, I also shot a couple of video fragments of the starling swooping about. The video setting is not something I use a lot on my camera, but it seemed particularly well suited in this case. Unfortunately Wordpress doesn’t let me put the video here directly, so you’ll have to click one of these links to watch:

• high quality video (640×480)
• medium quality video (480×360)
• low quality video (320×240)

Weather forecasts predicted a couple of hours of snowfall for today, as a large front was moving slowly across the Netherlands from south to north. An average amount of five to ten centimetres (2-4 inches) was expected, possibly going up to fifteen centimetres (half a foot) in some places. That was enough for the Dutch meteorological institute to issue a weather alarm, advising everyone to not travel unless really necessary, and to be extra careful when going outside.

The last time we had a fair amount of snow across a large part the country resulted in total chaos. Hundreds of people got stranded on the highway for hours, only able to complete their journey well after midnight. Others got stuck on railway stations or the airport and had to spend the night in emergency shelters. No one was going to let that happen again. People travelling by car today were advised to bring food, drinks, blankets, a flash light and a shovel, and to make sure their gas tank was filled and their cell phone charged. All traffic was urged to stick to the right lane, to keep at least that one clear of snow. Snow ploughs and de-icing trucks were ready to move in where necessary. Road authorities counted on much heavier traffic jams than normal during evening rush hour. The Dutch Railways were afraid switches would get stuck or trains would break down. Schools closed early to allow the students to make it home safely. Schiphol Airport ordered 750 field beds to be prepared for stranded passengers. Everyone was ready for the worst.

And then nothing much happened. Yes, it snowed. Yes, some roads became inaccessible. And yes, some flights had to be cancelled. But total chaos? No, not nearly. Here is a report of a day that was going to bring lots of snow and lots of havoc… and then didn’t. (Last update: 9am the day after.)

• The first snow reached the southern parts of the Netherlands around 9am and my town, Leiden, began turning white at 11. It was a bit colder than two days ago (when it was also snowing), so the snow didn’t melt on hitting the ground. Half an hour in, roof tops, trees, pavement and minor roads were already covered in a layer of white.
• The Dutch Railways (NS) implemented a modified train schedule by mid-morning. They basically cut a few trains, so they had room to deal with possible detours in case of frozen switches and to allow trains to run at lower speeds. Rover, an independent organization representing users of public transport, called the precautions premature, claiming that trains should be able to run normally with ten centimetres of snow. Rover always disagrees with the NS, and not always rightly so, but this time they had a point. As it turned out, train services were hardly affected by the weather. A grand total of one switch got stuck because its heating system broke down. That’s quite amazing, considering the Dutch railways are notorious for suffering delays for the smallest of reasons.
• Only two out of five runways were in operation at Schiphol Airport, causing delays and somce cancellations. A few hundred passengers have to spend the night with family or friends, in a hotel or at the airport, and try again tomorrow. The situation was worse in the UK, where several airports had to stall all incoming and outgoing traffic to clear the runways. The weekly Thursday colloquium at the Leiden Observatory was cancelled because the speaker, travelling from the UK, was stuck at a London airport.
• It stopped snowing in Leiden around 3pm. The four hours of near-continuous snowfall brought some three centimetres (an inch and a bit). Nice, but hardly special, and certainly no reason for a weather alarm. It was plenty for a snowball fight, which we engaged in vigorously with a couple of the undergrad and grad students. Two of us also built a snowman, who got decapacitated in the fight, but they quickly made him a new head.
• Evening rush hour moved forward to early afternoon, with many people trying to go home before the roads got too crowded. Interestingly, the actual evening rush hour was one of the quietest ever. At 5.30pm, the normal peak time, traffic was stuck across the country over a whopping 12 km (8 mi). On a normal Thursday, that’s around 200 km (125 mi) and road authorities had predicted jams totalling 350 km for today. Likewise, trains were no fuller than usual, even though there were fewer in operation.

Was the weather alarm really necessary? That’s hard to tell. It certainly lead to people staying at home all day or going home early. It’s likely that afternoon and evening traffic would have been busier if the alarm hadn’t been issued, but wide-spread chaos wouldn’t have occurred. There simply wasn’t as much snow as the meteorologists had predicted. Looking back, there was no cause for an official weather alarm. On the other hand, there was a good chance the weather would have been worse, making the alarm fully justified. It’s a tough question for the meteorologists: how certain do you have to be that the weather will be extreme enough for the alarm to be necessary? Weather will never be fully predictable, so we’ll always have false alarms. As long as they don’t occur too often, I’d say that’s acceptable.

What’s the matter today? Are the planets misaligned? Or is everyone overcome by yesterday’s few centimetres of snow? Whatever it is, it’s apparently resulting in accidents and near misses.

I almost got hit by a bus while cycling to the university this morning. I had right of way, but the bus driver didn’t see me in time so he just turned onto the road. We missed each other by less than a metre.

Someone else (probably a pedestrian) most likely did get hit by a bus. At least, there was a bus pulled over on the side of the road, with a police car and an ambulance behind it. There’s really only one reason for those three to be standing there like that. I didn’t see a victim, so either they were hidden from my view by the bus, or their injuries were light enough that they had already left under their own power.

An office mate of mine got hit by a car, but so far it looks like she only sustained a bruised arm. The laptop she was carrying in her backpack is still in one piece. The guilty driver shall probably remain unknown, since they drove right on and my friend couldn’t see their license plate. That’s a criminal offence: hit and run.

So, that’s three of these incidents in a short timespan. No more, okay?

Life is pretty much back to normal following yesterday’s storm havoc, but I had expected nothing else. We’ve had worse storms, like the January 25th, 1990 hurricane (up to 12 Beaufort) or the February 1st, 1953 North Sea flood, which killed 1835 and left tens of thousands homeless. Yesterday pales in comparison to such disasters as 2005’s Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 Boxing day earthquakes and tsunamis. Nevertheless, we haven’t had a natural event with this many fatalities, personal injuries and structural damage since the 1990 hurricane, so the January 18th, 2007 storm will definitely go into history as a notable one.

Like yesterday, I will compile a list of things I’d like to remember (last updated at 11.30pm):

• The storm claimed seven lives in the Netherlands: Two people were killed on the N224 road near Ede when a tree fell onto the car. A motorist was killed in Leersum after a tree fell down right in front of him and a 17-years-old guy died in similar fashion in Sint-Oedenrode. The fifth fatality occurred in Riel, where a kid was blown against a car. The other two deaths were only indirectly due to the wind. One man crashed into a truck on a highway, probably because he was too late in noticing traffic had come to a stop. Another men fell through a roof while trying to repair storm damage. Other countries also suffered fatalities: at least twelve people died in the UK, seven in Germany, three in the Czech Republic and two each in Belgium and France.
• Train services remained suspended for the remainder of last night. Repairs were conducted overnight and the first trains started rolling again around 5.30am, but it took until 3pm before all services were back on schedule. Five to six thousand people got stranded at railway stations and airports, where the Red Cross provided field beds, blankets and food and drinks. Apart from there being not enough beds in Utrecht, this all went very well.
• The last traffic jam finally dissolved around 2.30am, many hours later than normal. Most unfortunate were the people on a highway near Rhenen, who got stuck on the road for six hours.
• Structural damage is estimated at at least € 200 million ($ 260 million). That is twice as much as what was caused by the last big storm (October 27th, 2002), but only a third of the January 25th, 1990 hurricane.
• The coal ship that got into trouble in the Western Scheldt was saved after all. Several other ships, including the world’s largest container vessel, the Emma Mærsk, had to be supported by tugboats. The amount of oil leaked into the Rotterdam harbour seems to be less than the 1.5 million litres originally reported. Also, it didn’t cause much of an environmental disaster as the wind contained it to one part of the harbour.
• Collection of mail and transportation to sorting centres was severely hindered yesterday, delaying delivery of a few hundred thousand cards, letters and parcels. Some 17 million pieces of mail are normally handled each day, so it’s actually only a few percent that will arrive a day later than usual.
• Forests suffered only limited damage. The storm mostly uprooted trees in parks and gardens and along roads, because they are less deeply rooted. One exception was the Kuinder Forest near Emmeloord, where 1200 pine trees went down.
• Sixty seals in Pieterburen had to be relocated last night. The seal asylum was more crowded than usual, so two tents had been set up to house the extra animals. When part of one of the tents collapsed, the seals were moved over to the asylum director’s office, the asylum’s visitors area, and an adjoining cinema.