Spring Delay

Amsterdam has been remarkably cold since I returned from Thailand a little over two months ago. There was a false alarm of spring in early March, when the temperatures passed the 50 degree mark for two of three days. Since then, though, we have been between five and 15 degrees below normal, often with strong, biting winds.

Some (though not all) of the reason for the long gap between writings about Amsterdam and travels was due to the hectic nature of a conference that I helped organize and hosted in Amsterdam last week. Researchers from all over Europe, and a few from the U.S., came to Amsterdam for the annual conference of the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association. We advertised the often beautiful, late March springtime weather as a benefit of coming to the conference. But the high temperatures hovered around 35 degrees, the lows dipped into the low 20’s, and arctic winds howled through the canal streets that I led conference guests through around dinner time.

Part of the reason for the low temperatures has been the (relatively) dry air and lack of cloud cover. When there has been enough moisture, we’ve seen little snow flurries that remind us how lousy it is outside, but that melt quickly and leave none of the charm of a solid snowfall afterward. Even last Sunday, March 31^st, saw an hour or so of quickly falling dry little snowflakes.

I took my camera out into the streets during one of these snowfalls right after I returned from Scotland. This one did leave snow on the ground for at least a day, and it showed the grit of (some) Amsterdamers in the face of bad weather. Many people biked as they normally would, only with gritted teeth and with squinted eyes that tried to keep the snow at bay.

Now, though, it feels like spring has arrived. The temperatures remain about 10 degrees below normal, but the winds are calm and the sun is shining brightly enough that even 40 degrees feels like a heat wave compared to what we’ve experienced for two months. The ten day forecast shows temperatures rising to the upper 40’s and lower 50’s, with rain and, hence, a return to normalcy. If this normalcy does return, spring will hit Amsterdam like a ton of bricks, with people skipping work to drink beer on café terraces and lounge in the parks as soon as it hits 60 degrees.