All of our winters in Finland, ranked

The years listed are in the January of each winter season.

6. 2020. We didn’t get any snow at all until May so it was just dark and icy and gravelly all winter. The river didn’t freeze over for the first time in like a hundred years. Absolutely terrible.

5. 2017. Mostly I remember that this winter just went on FOREVER. I remember bundling Sterling up in snow clothes well into mid-April, and then there wasn’t really a summer, either.

4. 2016. Our first winter in Finland! It was fine.

3. 2019. Plenty of snow and lots of taking Sterling to päiväkoti by sled.

2. 2018. Lots of snow, lots of sun, and the river froze over so solidly that you could ski or skate on the ice for a few weeks.

1. 2021. Even more snow and even more sun than 2018! And it’s only the beginning of February! The kids are doing skating and skiing and sledding for PE at school PLUS I saw a rainbow on a super snowy and cold day a few weeks ago. There is no better feeling in the world than seeing a weather forecast where you get a bunch of snow, and then 10+ days of -5C (or colder). That’s what we’re living right now.

I think when most people think of winter in Finland, they imagine it’s always like our winter this year - quiet snowscapes and a sustained, predictable period of below-zero temperatures. But in Southwest Finland, as close to the sea as we are, it tends to be much, much messier. It snows, and then partially thaws and then refreezes into this uneven, jagged mess…which then lurks beneath the surface of the next snowfall, just waiting to trip you up or unexpectedly scrape the bottom of your sled. But this winter, we’re getting a classic Finnish winter that is really only guaranteed these days up in Lapland. So it feels like such a treat!