Stormy Weather II

[Bryn]

Actually, it would have been more like a half hours walk downhill for 10 minutes, then uphill for 20 on icy pavements, as against the usual 8 minutes through woodland with only a light covering of snow at ground level. At least I did not have the hefty wheelie-case full of recording equipment I had with me for the Morley College concert last Friday.

[oddoneout]

Got back to my car, parked in the Legoland Windsor park and ride car park, at around 11.30 last night, following bus journeys from Sadler's Wells (I;d been to a performance of Feldman's Crippled Symmestry at City University). There was a covering of about 2 cm of crisp snow on both the ground and the car. The doors unlocked reasonable easily bit the doors themselves were frozen shut. Try as I may, I was unable to open any of them for fear of breaking the door handles. Fortunately, two Legoland Hotel security personnel turned up in a 4x4 to see what was going on. They had seen me get off the bus and wondered what I was doing, working around a car tugging at the door handles. They quickly grasped my explanation and proceeded to assist, helping to break the icy seal by thumping the edges of nearside front door. After a while, the seal was weakened enough for the door to be pulled open. Phew! It took another 10 minutes or so to heat the windscreen enough to safely drive off and make my way home. I got in on the stroke of midnight. All this because the last couple of miles of the usual bus route was closed due to road resurfacing, and I did not fancy a 20-minute walk back from the bus station late night in the cold.

Next time I will make sure to take a can of de-icer in my back-pack.

And make sure the door seals and the bit of the car they make contact with are dry. My previous car was old and primitive and was good at getting wet in the creases, which would then freeze and necessitate long periods with a hair dryer to gain access - bit of a problem away from home......Being meticulous about wiping the driver's side dry reduced the difficulty considerably. My current much more modern car is much better but even so if I've had the doors open in the rain a few drops can make enough of a film to cause a bit of a hold up. The current weather patterns of wet then freeze happening close together have not been helpful. Thumping the door to break the seal isn't an option; lack of heft, and painful arthritis rules out brute force as a solution to such problems!

[BBMmk2]

It was minus -1Cyesterday at 6pm! Not surprising there’s a hard frost this morning.

[Serial_Apologist]

It was minus -1Cyesterday at 6pm! Not surprising there’s a hard frost this morning.

To me, there's only one thing worse than rain falling at temperatures when it would be expected to be snowing - as has happened today - and that is rain accompanied by strongs winds falling at temperatures when it would be expected to be snowing.

I'm so looking forward to the days when it is warm enough to get out on the bike, without having to don a coat.

[Bryn]

. . . I'm so looking forward to the days when it is warm enough to get out on the bike, without having to don a coat.

[vinteuil]

“I sometimes think that I should like
To be the saddle of a bike”

... this couplet apparently the laborious result of a collaboration between John Betjeman, WH Auden, and Louis MacNeice.

Well, it all depends, I s'pose...

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[BBMmk2]

I think we have fog coming down.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think we have fog coming down.

It should have lifted by now BBM. Watching fog rise into low stratus on a damp day, and the base of the low stratus then rising into less amorphous though still ragged stratocumulus, is one of the unacknowledged free shows that nature puts on in humid weather for those that appreciate low-grade thrill meteorological phenomena.

[oddoneout]

A damp and grey day although the threatened afternoon rain has not materialised (I think a village 2 miles away got some of it judging by the black clouds I could see from the bedroom window!) and the cloud is now breaking up and the sun might just be glimpsed before sundown if we're lucky - much milder too.

[Serial_Apologist]

A damp and grey day although the threatened afternoon rain has not materialised (I think a village 2 miles away got some of it judging by the black clouds I could see from the bedroom window!) and the cloud is now breaking up and the sun might just be glimpsed before sundown if we're lucky - much milder too.

Indeed so. The temperature rising to 11 C this afternoon made the 4 miles cycle each way to Brixton more than pleasurable, without the need to don gloves for a change. You never feel as secure with gloves when cycling. Tomorrow it's all change again, I'm afraid, with a cold front sweeping in from the NW replacing the maritime tropical air with maritime arctic, affecting Scotland, N Ireland, Wales and the NW by afternoon, and the rest of the country by sundown. That means it will be back to what the forecasters refer to as that "wintry mix", ie snow, hail, sleet and/or rain showers - and a strong-to-gale northerly to add a soupçon of wind chill to the recipe for Sunday and maybe Monday!

[BBMmk2]

It should have lifted by now BBM. Watching fog rise into low stratus on a damp day, and the base of the low stratus then rising into less amorphous though still ragged stratocumulus, is one of the unacknowledged free shows that nature puts on in humid weather for those that appreciate low-grade thrill meteorological phenomena.

Indeed it had! Rather a mild day yesterday, as it turned out! 11C!

[cloughie]

High winds rxpected here later!

[Serial_Apologist]

Really quite mild this afternoon - 10 degrees C - so decided to make the most of it being likely to be the last reasonably comfortable day for the outdoors for some time, to take the perimeter walk around Crystal Palace Park. What always surprises me is how popular this amenity is at this time of the year - much more so than in the summer on average days. This also goes for the local woods - last weekend there seemed to be family groups, dogs and so on, at every ten metres along the various pathways. This might be down to the fact that they are much less muddy than would normally be the case this far into winter. Normally I give the woods a wide berth between November and April due to the impassability of most of the walkways. In the summer, though, I often have the woods entirely to myself! A warm Sunday in the summer will bring the extended family picnic groups to the parks we are blessed with, with their makeshift barbecues using metal tin lids or even just tin foil covering glowing cinders, and the accompanying beefburger and chicken pieces smells (), but a pleasant late-evening stroll always reveals that the perpetrators do by and large take their gubbins away with them, or dump them in the park repositories, which can become overflowing.

[BBMmk2]

SA, MrsBBM has one of her snow headaches. Now I see from the Met Office, we could get snow this week. Hmmmm.....

[vinteuil]

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... went to the Bonnard at Tate Modern this morning (can't recommend it - Waldemar Januszczak's review today is spot on) - walking from St Paul's across the Wobbly Bridge - lordy but it was nippy : a severe cold breeze - even well wrapped, those bits of the anatomy exposed (cheek bones) froze....

Home now, central heating on full blast - won't be going out again today. Or much this week...


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