A wintry rant

Every year I am amazed by British society’s inability to cope with the realities of winter and the furore that I cause when I gently remind people that British winters are historically, geographically and climatically cold, stormy, icy and snowy.

For the past few weeks I’ve dared to flatly contradict people who welcome the mild weather, the unseasonal sunshine, the relatively high temperatures, and the lack of rain, sleet and snow.

That ruffled feathers enough.

Snowing at last

It might be a couple of months late, but the first real snow this winter is falling and very welcome it is too as we need substantial amounts of snow melt to replenish the aquifer that our borehole draws from.

We’ve had about 5cm of snow since 6pm, with it still coming down at 10.15pm.

We did have a strange mix of hail, sleet and occasional snow flakes last night that left the roads treacherous with ice today - a situation not helped by a lack of gritters - but it wasn’t proper snow.