big wind

I just got back from an early Sunday morning drive around the neighborhood. We're in the midst of a classic Reykjavík windstorm, with sustained winds in the 40s and gusts in the neighborhood of 60-80 m.p.h. That's some wind. It's pushing giant walls of ocean water over the seawall below my house and there are patches of flooded roadway all along the sea road. Seaweed and pieces of the wall (read: large rocks) are strewn all over, sometimes hundreds of feet in from the ocean. I got out of the car at Grótta (the lighthouse at the end of Seltjarnarnes) and was able to walk only a few feet: the wind was so strong that getting back to the car was a struggle. This is the biggest wind I've experienced and I had it all to myself as Iceland is basically 99% asleep at 8 a.m. on a dark and stormy Sunday. I saw only a handful of cars and a big orange street cleaning truck that was making loops around the flooded traffic circle, unplugging the drains.

During weather like this I often think of the Icelandic settlers who lived on the heath in earth-roofed houses, smoky on account of the open fire in the middle of the room. Those were some tough dudes. I'm glad I'm not living in a sod house today.