Nature News

Number of sunny days this week: 1
Number of cloudy days this week: 6
Number of rainy days this week: 0
Number of snowy days this week: 1
Number of windy days this week: 0
What is the air temperature right now in Fahrenheit?: 33
How was the weather this week?:

Konstanz's winters are a far cry from its sunny summers.  Right now the nights are misty and the days are foggy until 1:00 p.m.  As the temperatures drop week by week, the restaurants turn on their tile stoves and serve customers hot mugs of mulled wine - an old German tradition.  We are descending into the coldest days of winter, when the ice and snow make it saukalt - literally, "pig-cold."

What animals did I see this week? :

Surprisingly, no pigs! But on our walks, Jenny and I watched hundreds of ducks, dozens of loons and no fewer than forty swans swimming in the lake next to the city. They flock here constantly, always in the same places during the winter, as they feed off the pondweed in the water.

What was the coolest thing I saw in nature this week?:

The lake next to Konstanz. Germans call it the Bodensee, which is best translated as the "Lake of the Bottom."  (Just north of the city, spilling out from the Rhine River, there is the Obersee, the "Lake of the Top.")

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