Sue_xx_yy

A farmhouse 'blanketed' by snow (does sound more poetic than 'threadbare sheeted' by snow;
Stones in horse's field in Langdon Beck almost covered! (Again, very pretty photo)
Inverness to Edinburgh train 'battles' through at Culloden, near Inverness ('battles' at Culloden - get it, get it?)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...uk-in-pictures

My response: per Albert Finney in
The Dresser' - Where. Was. The Storm.

bvlenci

I suppose they've never seen anything like this:



The most recent storm (not shown in this photo) dumped more than 2 meters of snow in parts of the Italian and French Alps.

Moderator3

I live in central North Carolina and I just got more snow than that.

I checked the Guardian and the BBC and there is no mention of snow, must have melted.

hetismij2

You have to remember that the UK has a maritime climate and snow is pretty unusual. That said the whole country seems to grind to a halt at the first snow flurry 'tis true. More so now than in the past it seems to me.
Not that the Netherlands is any better at handling snow, though the do get the gritters and ploughs out earlier here.
Anyway it makes a change from Brexit, May and Trump for the papers.

bvlenci

When we were in Scotland a few years ago, we visited the beautiful island of Iona, which is farther north than Moscow. My husband said, "They must get an awful lot of snow here." I said, "Maybe not, since they're surrounded by the sea." We asked a young woman who worked in the tourist office about the snow. She said, "We got snow once in my lifetime, but I was away at university and I missed it." Even I was surprised.

hetismij2

The Gulf stream helps a lot, just as it does up in Norway where it keeps the sea from freezing, even though it within the Arctic circle.
With climate change there is no saying what will happen. The Arctic, and places like Alaska are too warm, whilst the East of north America, and places in Russia are experiencing record cold.

The British press likes to show photos of snow, and some, like the Daily Mail, always like to say Britain is colder than X in the winter and hotter than Y in the summer. The DM is also very good at forecasting a cold snap and a tonne of snow, or a heatwave and drought. Usually the opposite happens.

So far this winter, here in the frozen north of the Netherlands we have missed the snow, and only had severe gales and gallons of rain to contend with. I know now my house will withstand a force 11 wind, though my garden floods in places at the first raindrop. A snow free cold snap would be good though.

annhig

Certainly I have never seen a road completely free of snow with banks of it on either side as shown in the photo above. Not sure how they do that. If there is more than about a foot in the UK everything comes to a halt, and in fact here in Cornwall where we rarely have any, a mere ˝ inch produced traffic chaos about 12 years ago, as it continually froze and melted producing sheet ice. The gritters were useless as they couldn't get through.

As for winds, we've had quite a few here this year and a bit of damage as well, but nothing like this:

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/ne...house-14171968

My mum, who lives in Coventry, was very excited.

bvlenci

Annhig, I was actually looking for a different, but very similar, photo taken after the recent snowstorm in Italy and France, but I couldn't find it. That photo also had very high snow banks and a clean road. From my experience with snowstorms in the US, in order to clean the road that well, the snow has to be dry and powdery, not wet. I have no idea how they manage to plow it so high and straight. They must have top-notch equipment.

HappyTrvlr

There was a light snowfall on one of visits to London. It did not stick to the roads. However we were the only visitors to the Tower of London and they had canceled guided Beefeater tours due to the weather. We were amazed by this.

Scootoir

Loved the photos, thanks for sharing the link. In Southern California we forget how to drive if it rains.

marvelousmouse

That’s...a lot of snow for the Uk? For some reason, I thought at least the north got more than that. The horse looks like he’s enjoying life though.

That’s not even sufficient sledding weather where I grew up!

LancasterLad

I was staying in Scarborough in North Yorkshire all last week.

Overnight on Wednesday it snowed, much of which had turned slushy in town by daylight. That morning we drove over the North Yorkshire Moors to Whitby, the views and snow covered everything was a beautiful sight.

The following morning we set off back down south, and went over the Yorkshire Wolds, another picture perfect sight covered in the white stuff.

bvlenci

Yesterday parts of the Italian Alps got three more meters of snow. Some places have had more than nine meters since Christmas. (That's about 30 feet.) The risk of avalanches is at the highest level. Before the snow plows could start working, planes with bombs were sent over the riskiest areas to set off "preemptive avalanches".

annhig

That is a lot of snow, bvl. You know there's been a lot when they announce that people are trapped in Swiss ski resorts because there has been too much for them to get out, which is what happened yesterday in Zermatt and Davos. Worse places to be trapped though!

northie

I've been in London on Easter Tuesday in March and it snowed . My sons wedding day in Huddersfield - snowed the night before and the countryside was gorgeous - that was March too.

bvlenci

We were once in Ávila (Spain, not far from Madrid) on the 1st of May, and it snowed, enough to cover the ground.

When I was living in Princeton, New Jersey) we had a season where it snowed at least once every month, although not large amounts, from November through April: six months straight.

annhig

I can remember a few years ago a cricket match in July was snowed off. Spectators were wearing sheepskin jackets! It was "up north" somewhere.

nukesafe

My deep snow story is about when a friend and I played "ski bum", while in collage, by working at a resort on Donner Pass in California over the winter holiday break. Being short of money, we parked my friend's car on the shoulder, outside the tall orange poles placed on the verge to mark the edges for the snowplows. A bad choice as you will see. The only way to get from the highway to the lodge was by aerial tramway. A monster storm came in that trapped everyone in the lodge for a week. As the only way to get from the highway to the lodge, there was no way could you get to the highway without snowshoes.

When we were finally able to get to the road, the snowplows had cleared it so it looked like the picture at the beginning of this thread. The compact, heavy, hard as a rock, snow was 21 feet deep over my friend's convertible! It took us a day and a half to dig it out, and a hefty fine from the State Highway Patrol as an incentive not to do that again. Driving back to San Francisco was not much fun in an open car.

janisj

nukesafe -- that's funny. I love it when posters start with something like "I'm from California and we aren't used to cold weather and snow . . . " they need to get out more LOL

I have photos of two different roadsters of mine over the years at Lassen, Serene Lakes, Alpine etc with the sun shining, the top down . . . and 15 - 20+ foot walls of snow on both sides of the road similar to the photo up top.

flanneruk

"whilst the East of north America, and places in Russia are experiencing record cold."

Cobblers. If those wimpish Americans or Russians think they're having a tough time now, they should see what their predecessors 500 years had to put up with.

"See", not "read". Written records mostly go back only about 120 years, to about the end of the Little Ice Age, and that's the data set that claims to "justify" media reports about record temps. But archaeological, pollen and ice core records show temps were far lower 500 years or so ago.

Extraordinary that someone as keen as heitismij at pointing out media inaccuracies (at least when they're in the Daily Mail) can be so easily taken in by sloppy media reporting.