David Gillon

One advantage of spending all my time at my mother's is that there's a much higher likelihood of snow than down in Kent, so this weekend's weather system delivered our second snow of the winter.  (Though I suppose technically the first snow of Winter was in Autumn).

I'd estimate we got about four to six inches, though the weather station at Copley, 9 miles up the dale as the crow flies, got 25cm/10 inches, the most recorded anywhere in the country. Admittedly Copley is on record as the snowiest place in England.

The snowfall did last for an extended period, we had a covering when I went to sleep at 3AM on Sunday morning, and it was still snowing late into the evening, but temperatures were marginally above freezing, and it turned increasingly to sleet as evening progressed, so a lot of it had melted away by Monday morning. OTOH we still have a fair bit about and Weardale Ski Club reckons they have enough up the dale to keep operating until the weekend.

 I've been putting off going down to the station to pick up my ticket to go see my folks over Christmas, given last Sunday's snow has shown no sign whatsoever of melting. I'd pinned my hopes on today given a forecast of a distinct upward tick in temperatures. What we got was 3C and sleety rain, which will get the job done, maybe, but not quickly.

But needs must. So off I toddled, once I'd found my most solid pair of crutches (they were in the car). The paths on my estate were completely treacherous, compressed snow and ice. The roads were a bit better, the cars have worn a couple of good ruts down to the tarmac, so once you were on that you were okay. Of course that option doesn't work on the main road, but the footpaths there were better. Not perfect, there were still places you had to pick your way around rutted ice, but better. Which is important considering how steep that road is.

Could have done without: walking under a bus shelter by the station, first corner, big drop of freezing water falls, clears my hat and glasses, lands in my left eye. Second corner, big drop of freezing water falls, clears my hat and glasses, lands in my right eye. *rolls eyes*

So I got into the station and you feed the machine the card you used to pay, then enter a booking reference onto the touch screen. So I'm trying to juggle wallet, phone with the emailed reference, and trying to look over my glasses to read the damned number because I wore my old glasses in case I fell over. And I get in entered and press confirm. And it asks me to press confirm. And it asks me to press confirm. etc. At which point the guy checking tickets comes over and rams the full width of his thumb across the confirm button. "That one's a bit tricky," he says as it starts to print out tickets. No shit, Sherlock!!

Walking back was much the same, except uphill. It does look like the rain is starting to make some progress on the hard-packed snow, but that didn't stop me slipping twice, though I saved myself both times. (Kudos to the Merc driver who waited for me to finish walking along in the ruts before pulling away).

If it doesn't freeze overnight, then I think this should finish the snow, if it does freeze overnight, it'll be an absolute ice-rink tomorrow!

And that's why I always order my train tickets delivered by mail. Except when I don't get the option.

 

My sister and mother told me separately that they woke up to a covering of snow - OTOH they live four doors apart, so not getting the same weather report would be weird. And my sister added that she spent part of the last day of March herding 30 8 year olds back to school from the other end of town in a blizzard, which she hadn't planned for (she had to step in to cover part way through their field trip to the river).

My brother-in-law's Covid case has been confirmed by PCR in the hope of getting him on one of the anti-virals, which may go through tomorrow, even without them he's actually looking far better than my sister was at this point in things, despite being 12 years older and having multiply screwed lungs. And meanwhile his younger grandson (5?) has now got Covid for the second time (not via his granddad).

I'm holding off on booking my trip North for Easter until I see how things develop.

Actually it disappeared by midnight on Sunday, but that means it lasted almost a full week, which by Kent standards is unusually lengthy, doubly so as we never had more than about three inches lying at any one time - it snowed a little each day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but mostly only kept up with the thawing. Normally that amount wouldn't last more than a couple of days, but the temperature stayed at about -2C until Sunday (windchill about -5 to -8C), so it hung around longer.

As soon as the temperature popped above zero it thawed quickly, about half my garden was clear by sunset Sunday, and a bit of rain about 11PM washed the last of it away. The only thing left were the snowman and igloo built by next door's daughter - that's the one on the left who is twenty-something, not the one on the right who is three. The igloo was still standing at lunchtime on Monday, but had collapsed by mid-afternoon and was close to gone by last light, while the snowman halved in height over the course of the day. When I checked this afternoon, both were completely gone.

I did get to see some unusual wildlife during the snow, a flock of twenty-odd redwings descended on my front garden and stripped one of the bushes bare of berries, before roosting in the trees on the other side of the road (a friend on the other side of town also noted they had a flock visit). They left the berries in my hedge completely alone, even when perching on it waiting their turn at the other bush. That seems a bit odd, as far as I'm aware the hedge is mainly cotoneaster, and thrushes (which redwings are) are supposed to like their berries. Last time I saw them was the last time we had heavy snow, so clearly the redwings are common in the area, but mostly stay out of town unless they're desperate. I've also seen the same thing up in Durham, though those may have been fieldfares, not redwings.

And now the snow is gone, and I may have to restart the daily waddle, which hasn't happened since lockdown started in November, but maybe I'll wait until it's just a bit warmer (I stopped because our Covid rate was through the roof, peaking at well over 800/100k, plus that was the Kent variant, plus winter, but it's now back down to 92/100k, well under the national average)

Not a lot admittedly, but I thought I might have to go the entire winter without seeing any and I'm not sure that's ever happened before.

'The Beast from the East' isn't really living up to its billing at the moment, we had some heavy-ish snow when I woke up about 10AM, but mostly it's been very small stuff, and while there was a definite wind from the North driving it earlier, right now it's mostly just milling about as it falls. The grass is covered, the roads and paths aren't. But the forecast is for two more days of this, so it could gradually mount up to a decent amount - not that it takes much to cause disruption given the south only sees significant snowfall about once every six years pr so.

I had my sister on line last night saying she'd been up in the loft with my mother and could she (my mother) get rid of my university notes. As they're pushing 40 years out of date in Comp Sci I said yes, in practise there's nothing I really want to keep except my final year project if they came across it (I have a feeling I already saved that for posterity a few years ago, but I have no idea where I put it). She rang later to ask a few more details on what it might look like and said she was sitting next to "the Grim Ripper", which was worth a smile.

I had one of those "crap, is that the time," moments last night. I've been adding a few user-made mods to Train Simulator (mostly new locomotives) and quite a few weren't showing up. I know that for most of those I just need to add a file telling the game they're there (it didn't used to have the ability to use stuff on the fly, so most enthusiasts have never gotten around to writing those files), but the utility I was using to add the files wasn't finding a lot of the stuff I knew I'd added. I was trying to figure out why some showed and some didn't, when I remembered the utility has an 'indexing' process to find them, rather than just looking in the folder structure, I'd run that when I first installed it, but not since. So I ran it, and sat there and waited, for about three hours (during which I downloaded and installed yet more mods). And then I sat and looked through all the new stuff it had found, and added a few of them to confirm things now worked, and then I looked at the time and it was Oh Crap O'Clock. At least I didn't have any trouble getting to sleep for once!

Alexa is currently advising me it's freezing and snowing, I could actually have worked that out for myself.

Several hours of sleet driving in from the East this morning have left my front bedroom windows literally frosted from top top bottom. First time I've ever seen that happen. The downstairs front window is the kitchen, with the boiler right next to them, so doesn't have the full effect, however the front door handle and letterbox are sheathed in ice.

I went out for a quick waddle up and down the street, just to see what the entrance to the estate was like, and everything had that same 2mm sheath of ice - crunch, crackle! Where my neighbours had cleared the paths was a sheer skating rink, while where they had pitched the snow they had shifted was far safer walking.

I wasn't out more than 10 minutes, I've been back inside half an hour, and my sinuses still hurt from the cold. There's freezing rain falling right now, so the skating rink effect is just going to get worse. I've got a bowl of soup heating and I'm staying right here until it's gone!

Kent doesn't see anything like as much snow, often none at all in a winter, but does tend to get a fairly good dose when it does - I've waded to work through waist deep snow when I was young and stupid but that was exceptional (it was noticeable that only the Northerners and the Welsh made it in that week day, none of the locals). This batch was only a couple of inches, but was falling quite heavily for several hours. As I have a streetlight at the bottom of the back garden to backlight it falling snow makes for a very pretty effect. It seemed to be quite waterlogged as snow goes, so heavier than it might have looked, and after a couple of hours I heard a dull thud from the patio. When I went to look I found my jasmine bush had peeled itself away from the fence and was flopped over the patio chairs. Fortunately it picked itself up once the snow melted off it and there's no need for me to go out and tie it up. I was very surprised it did fall over as there's definite triffid in its breeding and it curls itself around everything.

Of course the lack of regular snow here means no one knows how to drive in it, and it fell over the Thursday rush hour. I was truly glad not to be stuck in the queue of traffic that was inching down the main road into town. I have been stuck in it in the past, when I was still working, and it was truly miserable, an hour plus to get home instead of 5-10 minutes. There were also times pre-car when I was on foot, gave up on catching a bus and outpaced the traffic, on crutches. Not missing that at all (though I got some memorable evil glares from drivers as I effectively skied past them <g>).

OTOH I do actually like snow - my dad could never understand that, but ensuring the roads were all ploughed was one of his professional responsibilities (see above re place with most snowfall in England), so I can understand his mixed feelings - and I've not had any chance to enjoy the clean crispness and nippy chill of this batch, so is it really evil of me to hope we get some more in a week or two when I'm rid of this damned cold? Of course it's not exactly practical in the chair, but my New Years resolution is to try and get back into the daily waddle, the number of times I walked more than 100m in the last year is probably into double figures, but not by much (and I measured my length on a couple of those).