This week was rather different, however!
The news and weather forecasts were full of the 'Beast from the East' , and we were forecast to have light snow on Thursday, getting worse on Friday.
There was a little light snow on Thursday morning, which Loki found quite interesting! It was very cold (about -3, I think)
Then during the day we had flurries of snow, getting worse, and in light of this and the warnings from the police and Met office we closed our offices and sent all the staff home at 3, with one or two who live further away leaving sooner.
By the time I got home, after driving a couple of colleagues who had walked in, home, there was quite a lot of snow even on the main road, which of course had not yet been gritted. Fortunately my commute is short, and everyone was driving sensibly, although there were several vehicles with spinning wheels, and I saw a couple of minor skids.
It continued to snow all afternoon and evening, and was also bitterly cold (so the snow was much dryer and more powdery than we're used to) and very windy, which meant that the snow was drifting - I ended up with patches of my driveway that were almost clear.
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| Thursday afternoon |
As it got dark the wind got up further - I was reminded of the quote from Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising' "Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining" - I would have got quite worried if I'd seen any dark riders or large numbers of rooks!
And I got to watch Loki experiencing deep snow for the first time.
We'd made the choice to close the office on Friday, on the basis that the police and local council were both were advising against any but essential travel, so I spent Friday doing some work from home, and admiring the pretty white stuff outside the windows.
The wind made it hard to judge exactly how much snow fell - I have a small drift (about 2' tall) outside the back door, and others by my front and side fences, all with beautiful curves and shapes. I think in places where the snow wasn't drifting it was about 6 inches deep.
I also walked down to the village shop, which had run out of bread and milk, and had no papers (the wine aisle looked pretty bare, too!) The main road wasn't clear, and I was very glad I didn't need to drive on it, or on my own road. I met lots of my neighbours, and lots of excited dogs and small children, but I think during the whole day, I only saw or heard about 3 vehicles go past the house, all of them either tractors or 4x4s.
And of course, working from home had the advantage that I could make a nice slow-cooked casserole, and bake some bread, in between other jobs!
Not far from here, people spent all night trapped in their cars on the A303. I decided not to try to drive into Bristol to go to the theatre, as planned!
Today (Saturday) has been much milder - I think between 0 and 1 degrees Celsius - I went for a short, but picturesque walk after getting the papers. (The main road was clear this morning, although ours, being less busy, and was still mostly compacted snow and ice)
This afternoon, it's become milder again -the last showers have been rain, not snow. Hopefully, if it doesn't freeze tonight, everything will be back to normal by Monday!
2 comments:
I love the last vid of Loki in his hole - that's hilarious. I wish it would snow like that here, I'd love to see Nemo and Mulder exploring.
I hope that the roads are safe by the time you go back to work.
We get it very rarely - I was looking back and the last time we had any like this was in 2010, when we had snow round Christmas.
It's turned much milder here yesterday and today, we're having rain showers rather than snow so the roads are clearing. Even my road, which doesn't have much traffic, is pretty clear now.
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