In the grasps of winter by Victoria Graham
So where is spring?
There has been quite a lot of winter weather recently. There have been many reports in Europe as far south as Spain where a state of emergency was declared, to as far east as Greece. Even the Eiffel Tower closed on Friday because of the bitterly cold weather. Black ice formed on the metal floors and officials didn’t want to salt them for fears of corrosion. And of course here in Britain, Kent was reporting the worst snow they had seen in ten years.
We have even seen snow in London, not a regular occurrence at this time of year and certainly quite unusual seeing as last Tuesday 1st March, London recorded its eleventh consecutive day of reported snow, but still not quite enough of a covering to please the sledging fanatics amongst us.
Although some of the spring-like flowers are out, crocuses, snowdrops and now some of the early varieties of daffodil, it’s felt more like winter than ever just recently. Would you believe then that the winter season of 2004 - 2005 has actually been milder than normal? The mean temperature was 1.5C above average despite the fact it has been so bitterly cold recently, and the season has been slightly drier, although there were regional variations. Scotland for instance, had 126% of its average winter rainfall; the North of England also had some very wet weather in January. Remember the prolonged heavy rain from the 7th to the 9th that caused the severe flooding in Carlisle, in fact it was the worst flooding recorded here since at least 1822.
Despite the recent cold snap a real feature of this winter has been the mild weather with reports of flowers, bees and frogspawn appearing very early.
Maybe we should have read the early signs of this last weeks snow from events occurring further north. A record number of waxwings arrived in Scotland from Scandinavia, and it was noted that it had been a very good year for berries and hedgerows. According to folklore this is a warning of a hard winter…maybe we’ve just had it!
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