Yesterday, all of England was blanketed in snow. Up to 10cm in some places. Not many children went to school - so they threw snowballs and went sledding. Today there was more snow oop north, but the south has mostly melted.
The transport system was paralysed: crews worked overnight to clear the snow off the rails because tube trains won't run if they cannot make contact with the electricity, but still many tubes struggled to pull out.
London lost £100million yesterday in business owing to the snow and people not being able to get in to work.
They stayed home and spent the day sending photos in to the news to be shown during the weather bulletins. There were photos of snowmen, snow robots, snow dogs, snow bears. Who knew that people who rarely see the stuff could get so creative with it?
It wasn't that cold yesterday, so even though the snow stayed in most areas, I could have gone out without being so muffled up. The ground became wet overnight, and today it's so much colder. My toes aren't warm at all.
We talk about global warming and how we will all melt, but I am watching a program about the Supervolcano, in this instance at Yellowstone. I have blogged about this before, right here.
Planet earth is due a major eruption. If it happens, the world will plunge into a mini Ice Age.
You can't win either way.
Anyway, I'm off out of town this weekend for Diva's b-day party and not looking forward to wearing party clothes in this weather...It's more acceptable to go to a dinner in Canada wearing a polar neck, than to go to a club in the UK.
P.S. If anyone can improve on that grammatically lame last sentence, please do.
P.S.2 Sorry to say, I have yet another headache today.
15 comments:
Sorry about your headache :( I hope it goes away so you can have some peace from the pain.
Wow, snow for you! Kind of weird when you don't usually get storms like that. I think it snowed once in the four years I lived in London. It was so exciting for me (well, I was just a little kid). Now, living in the States, well, snow if quite normal and very rare that things close down due to a snow storm. We have to be practically BURIED and even then.
Oh... London got snow... and Jakarta got flood...
Get well soon from you headache!
There was less than 1cm of snow in central London, where there was even that, the pavement was still visible. The disruption is absurd. Boot out Ken!
Hi,Olivia..yes,I read about the snow..and,that's quite a scary prediction u've made...about the 'major eruption' planet Earth is heading for...whew...As you say,You can't win either way.So,enjoy watching the snowmen in the snow,the rains during the rainy season,et al...can u imagine,this yr,it's been raining on and off since 3 months,in Dubai?In 2002, when I came and for the next 2 yrs, there was totally just 1-2 days of rain overall.
BTW,I loved the 'cool underground logo' in the previous post.
ML - It's gone today. I've finished packing, just need to shower and go :)
You know, it snowed only twice also in the first 12 years I lived in London - but the winters were consistently colder. Since coming back 4 years ago, it has snowed every year - a couple were cold, a couple were mild with cold snaps like this year. OK, it only lasts a few hours to a day in London, but still...
They gritted the roads, but cars still slid. The trains couldn't run because of the hundreds of miles of tracks, and then the ice on the London rails. Buses were diverted around hills. I mean, what can we do?
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Selba - extreme weather for extreme days. I saw some photos of the Jakarta flooding last night.
Is it going down yet?
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Rebecca - you political Italian girl, you! Yes, Ken is a nutter. I don't know how he is still in office.
All I can say is, there must be a better way of getting the ice off the rails, but other than that what I said to ML...Typically of most British things, not even the road grit works here!
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Amit - I can't believe there is so much rain in Dubai. It might become a green desert! As I said to Selba, extreme weather...
Minstrel - thankfully it's just my head. But you're right, even my mother in Canada has a cold now.
speaking of which, that "oop north" thing isn't Canadian, it's the way the northerners talk in England, which is harsher on the ear than the soft southern accent. So it goes like this:
up = oop
somebody = soomboddeh
rough = rooff
mother = moother
(uh becomes ooh)
and the long aah of the south becomes a short (a!):
baath = bath
graass = grass
now = naow
isn't it = intit
and so on...
It's a whole nobbly dialect.
Now, about the volcano - I mentioned in my old article that Vesuvius was due some activity, as it's been a while since the last one.
thanks for those links. Is Old Faithful in Yosemite? Whew. I panicked for a moment coz I couldn't remember the name of America's other major western park!
My gosh, I just re-read my old supervolcano article myself, and found that my discussion of the eruptipn actually started with talking about a genetic bottleneck in mitochondrial DNA...huh.
wow! funnily, we hardly had any snow here in edinburgh!
10cm? My mate was flying his Harris Hawk up in North Wales and he had closer to 10 inches lol! Or are we just talkin about towns etc? :p
the weather all around the world is changing in an unpredictable manner ,we can vever apprehend the effects of global warming worldwide.
but hey snow is beautiful ,i miss it here in damas ,every year snow would fall,not likely this year ,another effect of global warming i guess
Ecky-thump, lass. Thee's got a reet good grasp of 'ow we speaks Ooop North.
Don' thee forget summat else:
We dont pronounce 'h'.
For example: the city of Hull becomes 'Ull.
And the North York Moors geographical attraction "The Hole Of Horcum" blends into one word:
"Theoloforkum".
Otherwise, top marks.
Eee, thee's a grand lass.
Hmm...if I tried to spell phonetically the way people talk in rural Oregon, I wonder how it would be...
Hey, y'all, I been waitin' here in front o' the baenk fir n' hour, n' I thought maybe some'm was up...
Naaaah...it just doesn't have the same character.
(What about Texas? Howdy! How ya been? Oh, ahm fahn, thanky kindly! Then again, I've heard that people in all the big cities in Texas nowadays tend to speak with New York accents...if they don't speak Spanish, that is...)
(Is my life in danger now?)
haha! The Hull accent is particularaly unique with a pronunciation of O becomind err.
I bought a great trnalsation card from their Tourist information office, some of the ones I remember:
Fern curl - telecommunications
Perp - Head of the catholic church
ah'll bray yerreddin - I will engage in physical confrontation with you
errnerr! - An exclamation of dismay.
My old tema leader here was a proper souterner - i.e considered North London tantamount to being in Scotland. When he said oop North he ppronounced it like 'ooooo' - he had that little conception he couldn't get even the basics of parodies correct! :p
Yuck! Not another headache!! I guess we're doomed no matter what.....
Snow in London? Wow. They should come to Utah in January. Scary stuff. :)
Prerona and Matt - yes, the news was careful to mention only the snow in England. We wouldn't want to miff the Scots or the Welsh, would we? :P
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Yaser - and guess what? They also say global warming can cause another Ice Age. Hm.
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Mike - hehe, thanks!
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Moody - that rural Oregon, also sounds like much of the midwest and southern Canada.
And your attempt to type Texan had me giggling!
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Matt - Gah! The Hull accent would drive me bonkers! Err Nerr?!?!?!?!
Oh I hadn't thought peope would lengthen the oooh. I suppose I should have told Minstrel that instead of being the ooh-ahh ooh, it's an oops ooh. As in, short.
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Beenzzz - and do you know, I had another on Sunday and today. I ought to get my eyes tested.
There's skiiing in Utah, isn't there?
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