What on earth are they doing?

Today, a cloudy day with snowfall. Temperature was -5°C in the afternoon, which felt balmy after the last week. :-) Very easy to pedal when the bike is not frozen. And wind from south gave me a nice boost coming back from downtown, my bike felt like it was flying. :-D

Spot the ice fisher?

At the market square the fat cop statue was getting snowed on...

... while it was looking at something very weird going on. An excavator at the market square?

On top of several meters of snow, piling it higher and higher? There are signs saying "No winter maintenance" on some of the lamp posts on the square, but usually that means no snow removal or gritting. I and several other passers by asked each other what on earth was going on. Nobody knew.

A snow castle? A hill for the kids for sledding? Snow sculptures? A new ski resort with 5 meter high hill? Storage for the snow?

A quick look on the newspaper didn't solve the puzzle. Some other interesting news:

Although there were reports on a few car crashes due to the flying snow and icy conditions. A timber truck was turning right. A van was following it and slowed down. A lorry was following the van, couldn't stop in time and crashed into the van and the timber truck. At the same site, an hour later, a rear end collision. So it's just not the southeners who crash when tailgating.

The police rescued a group of Dutch tourists (my guess?), whose car got stuck in snow drifts in Lapland. In -35°C weather. Somewhere in the middle of the forest, as they only saw trees. They had been driving on a forest service road, and they're not always on a map as you're not supposed to drive there. Luckily, they were found before the car ran out of fuel.