Yesterday my mum notified me of the "blizzard" outside. This consisted 
of approximately 3 tiny snowflakes barely visible to the naked eye.

Yesterday evening, the ground was about 20% covered in whiteness. If you 
imagine taking a chocolate cake and lightly sprinkling it with icing 
sugar, that's roughly what it looked like. (For extra points... go *get* 
a chocolate cake and eat it!)

This morning, as I walked to my car there was approximately 15 mm of 
snow laying on the ground, and barely visible flakes were still 
continuing to fall. On the way to work, the snow cover gradually became 
thinner and thinner, until in Coventry there isn't even a full covering.

On the radio I hear that the MET office has issued a country-wide Severe 
Weather Warning, schools and businesses have been closed, and the 
Highways Agency has advised people not to travel "unless absolutely 
necessary".

Uh... WTF? It's not exactly like the Arctic out there! :-P

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Check it out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7864395.stm

Oh my God, look at that snow! It's almost *ankle high*! :-P



For referense, *this* is "heavy snow":

http://www.telenendaz.ch/documents/fond%20ecran/1024boardercross.jpg

See how the base of that tree is sunk down into the snow? There's 
because there's *multiple feet* of snow. Not this 11 mm nonesense.

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> Uh... WTF? It's not exactly like the Arctic out there! :-P

Hehe I laughed when I saw the bbc website too, with it's "Heavy Snow" 
shock-headline, only to be followed by photos like these:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45435000/jpg/_45435350_006818362-1.jpg

What on Earth would the headline be if there was actually, you know, about 
30cm of snow?

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> For referense, *this* is "heavy snow":
>
> http://www.telenendaz.ch/documents/fond%20ecran/1024boardercross.jpg
>
> See how the base of that tree is sunk down into the snow? There's because 
> there's *multiple feet* of snow. Not this 11 mm nonesense.

This too (taken from my apartment door a couple of years ago)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/56/108046767_2e327c4fa8_o.jpg

See how the car wheels are completely under snow?

*That* is heavy snow, when you can't drive until the snow plough comes 
through (and shoves 10 tons more snow onto your car which you have to then 
spend 2 hours removing).

Here's my car a week later when I decided to eventually dig it out:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/19/109805956_ac25f22cf5_o.jpg

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scott wrote:

> Hehe I laughed when I saw the bbc website too, with it's "Heavy Snow" 
> shock-headline, only to be followed by photos like these:
> 
> http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45435000/jpg/_45435350_006818362-1.jpg 

PEOPLE OF BRITAN, THIS IS NOT WHAT HEAVY SNOW LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS A 
MINOR FLURRY. GET SOME PERSPECTIVE.

Why, when I was a lad (no! come back!), my old man used to drag me and 
my little sister up to the top of the hill, and then she'd sledge to the 
bottom again. And let me tell you, I can remember walking in snow *so 
deep* that I'd be up to my knees in it, and it all used to fall in the 
top of my boots! :-P

OK, my boots were probably only a foot high or so, but still... the snow 
used to lay for *weeks* on end, not an hour or two. Hell, as recently as 
1996 I remember us getting about 20 cm of snow, and nobody seemed that 
bothered about it.

> What on Earth would the headline be if there was actually, you know, 
> about 30cm of snow?

God only knows... :-D

I'm still unimpressed by the pictures of the "blizzard conditions" 
featuring a bunch of people trying to push a car out of the ankle-deep 
snow. I mean, why are cars spinning their wheels in 1.5 cm of snow?? 
There was more snow than that in my estate, and nobody appeared to have 
any trouble with it...

OOC, how much snow is there in the various other parts of the world 
where POVers are reading this??

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scott wrote:
> This too (taken from my apartment door a couple of years ago)
> 
> http://farm1.static.flickr.com/56/108046767_2e327c4fa8_o.jpg
> 
> See how the car wheels are completely under snow?
> 
> *That* is heavy snow, when you can't drive until the snow plough comes 
> through (and shoves 10 tons more snow onto your car which you have to 
> then spend 2 hours removing).

Heeheee... Where in the world is this?

> Here's my car a week later when I decided to eventually dig it out:
> 
> http://farm1.static.flickr.com/19/109805956_ac25f22cf5_o.jpg

Indeed: The snow was there FOR A WEEK! Heh.

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> Heeheee... Where in the world is this?

Munich.

> Indeed: The snow was there FOR A WEEK! Heh.

A week?  THat year I think there was snow around until April or so.  I 
remember one day in particular where the air temperature was about 15 
degrees and sunny (it was the first spring-feeling day) and yet there were 
still big piles of snow around.

This winter we have just had 4 or 5 snowy days, each time about 5-20 cm, 
which have then melted *a bit*, but it's never really got warm enough over 
the last couple of months to melt it all away properly.

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For extra credit, play with this:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/cambridgedata.txt

;-)

I notice that there isn't a single month since the previous millennium 
where the minimum temperature has been negative, but looking at the 
start of the listing it seems quite common.

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> For extra credit, play with this:
>
> http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/cambridgedata.txt
>
> ;-)

:-)

I see that if it follows that trend, in 100 years we'll be 2.4 degrees 
warmer.  Which seems inline with what I've read elsewhere...

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scott wrote:

> I see that if it follows that trend, in 100 years we'll be 2.4 degrees 
> warmer.  Which seems inline with what I've read elsewhere...

Impressive. I couldn't get my copy of Excel to graph it adaquatly; it 
just came out as a dence mass of apparently random points. (Well, it 
*is* 150 years of data...)

It appears that the winter temperatures are pretty unstable anyway. If 
you look only at the *summer* temperatures though, a clear trend seems 
visible.

I wonder if you could somehow plot this on a circular graph with a 
12-month cycle?

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