It is kind of the same story with the Columbus Day storm of 1962 in Northern California. We were told that it was a 500 year storm but the storm that hit last week was just as bad and with a lower barometric pressure center, 945 mb.

Meanwhile, I look out my window and across the street is the cove of a fjord. I have been told that twenty years ago, the water came over the road in an intense storm. Our tides are more influenced by barometric pressure than the sun and moon. When I see mud instead of water, it means a very high barometer.

But the water may never come over the road again because we have isostatic rebound left over from the ice age and the land is slowly rising. It is rising two meters per century on the Finnish islands of Ahvenenmaa. It is quite complex.

NISSY (NISSY2) said:

"isostatic rebound"

That's what's happening to the UK. The southern part of the UK is sinking whilst the North is either stable or rising.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

I thought Greenland could grow potatoes because it was getting warmer. ( Like it was in the Middle Ages when it was settled. ) 

That was the point. Warming climes produces more food not only in Greenland but in Canada, Russia and Norway because of longer growing seasons. We just need more people who want more food.

On a side, Norwegian media reported recently that Russia is now producing premiums wines. Vineyards take five years to produce profitable grapes and wine and it has been eight years since the Ukraine related sanctions on Russia. Who was it who said be careful what you wish for?

"Norwegian media reported recently that Russia is now producing premiums wines."

I thought they always had produced large amounts of wine in Southern Russia.  (Rostov, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Dagestan and Stavropol.)

Nice story. Like your cousin, I don't drink. 

My cousin lives in Durham, California half of the year and on the coast in the US state of Washington the other half. He and his partner joined us in Oslo for our rail trip from Moscow to Beijing and he and I played about eighty games of cribbage along the way. Our mothers were sisters.

The train from Irkutsk to Beijing didn't have a bar so I whined because I wanted to buy a bottle of vodka to celebrate leaving Russia. One of the stewardesses told me she would sell me a bottle of vodka which is illegal. She sold me a bottle of Genghis Khan vodka that wasn't Russian but Mongolian which we shared with the other travelers in our car. A police lady came by and told us to hide the bottle. Life on the steppes. :)

http://mongolianspirits.com/eng/

That's interesting. If I actually knew someone who liked vodka, I'd buy them a bottle of Mongolian for Christmas.