A Slightly Less Whingy Weather Post.

We don’t traditionally get much in the way of easterly winds in Britain during the winter. I remember being given the phrase ‘warm, wet, westerly wind’ to remember in a geography lesson at school, because that’s what we mostly get and how we derive benefit from the Gulf Stream – or used to. For the past few days we’ve been getting strong easterlies invading from northern continental Europe. It seems wind can succeed where Hitler and Napoleon failed, more’s the pity. And because of the aforementioned facts, I never realised before just how susceptible my house is to an east wind. It’s become very apparent this year, having had to suffer the wind chill factor inside the house. And it’s likely to continue for at least a few more days yet.

Damn.

It’s also been apparent that walking homeward along Mill Lane is rather more uncomfortable than walking outward, because you get the damned east wind full in your face. Well, diagonally from the left to be more precise. On a more positive note, however, Andy Irvine and Davy Spillane’s album East Wind is well worth listening to if you’re up for some East European music played with an Irish bias. Here’s a track to whet your appetite:

Out of curiosity, I googled ‘record snow in March,’ and saw lots of reports of record March snowfalls in various parts of northern Europe. By stark contrast, though, there was another one which said that this is the first March since records began in which Toronto has had no snow.

Well, there you go. Seems we’d better start throwing expectations out of the window (or even ‘out the window’ if you’re an American who’s forgotten where you got your language from.)