The weather forecasters are doing it now – joining in with
the media’s mania for sensationalising the mediocre. I watched several weather
forecasts today and they all carried the same line, or only slight variations
on it:
‘Tonight is going to be very
cold – temperatures down to minus 2 or 3, possibly even lower in some rural
spots.’
Minus 2 or 3 is not very
cold by the standards of an ordinary January night in lowland Britain.
It’s perfectly normal; any night that doesn’t fall below freezing is generally
regarded as mild. Last winter we were getting night temperatures as low as
minus 20. Now that’s very cold.
I was perfectly comfortable on my walk to night – warm, even
– and I noticed that I still take great delight in something I’ve loved doing
since I was knee high to a baby cricket. If there’s any hint of moisture in the
atmosphere, I have to shine the torch up at the sky in the hope of catching
something in the beam, preferably a Junkers or a Dornier on its way to doing
dastardly deeds. Then I can go de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de.
There weren’t any about tonight, but it was fun looking.
5 comments:
The weathermen have been doing the same thing here. Starting on either Tuesday or Wednesday we've been under a "Winter Weather Alert/Advisory" and have been warned os snow, rapidly falling temperatures and ice on the roads. We've had a light sprinkling of snow and that's about it. This winter has been warmer than most. The worst weather we've had in the past few years was in December of 2009... temperatures dropped fast and we had an accumulation of about an inch of snow in a matter of hours. There were many car accidents and hundreds of people were trapped and stranded along the interstates because no one was prepared because the meteorologists hadn't predicted it and put out a "Winter Weather Alert."
I said inch where i meant to say a foot of snow in a matter of hours.
We got caught the same way two years ago.
One of my best experiences was driving four miles along a country lane to get home one night on the tail end of a day-long blizzard. Mountains of snow everywhere - no sign of the road, the verges, the hedges, nothing. And visibility was down to a matter of yards. Got home to find all the water pipes frozen, the water in the loo frozen, and 2ft snowdrifts in the loft. Such fun!
Oh, wow! That's horrible. I don't like snowy weather at all. As long as i live in the US i'll stay in the south!
But isn't there a trade-off involved? Don't you get more things that bite down there?
Must admit, though, the day after the one I described above was spent clearing the snow out of the loft. It put me off the white stuff for ever.
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