h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Monday, December 8th 2003, 07.30

Little chance of snow here today - currently 58º, forecast to get into the mid 70s. I'm not sure whether or not I miss snow. I loved it as a kid of course, and even as an adult I reckon most of us go at a snow scene and at falling snow, as long as it doesn't screw things up too much. It's not like London gets a lot of snow, so it's not really something I miss because I'm used to it (I have some nice pictures of snowfall in West Ham Park and the bit of Epping Forest that snakes down towards Wanstead Flats though), but I most definitely do miss rain, althoug I reckon the UK gets just a little too much, especially during the summer.

I recall one particular June a year or two before I came here, when it rained almost every single day! I remember that we didn't see the sun for virtually the entire month - the sky was laden with dark, low, heavy cloud from one end of the month to the other. One morning the sun did peep out at sunrise through a break in the clouds, but it disappeared again as it got higher and that was the last we saw of it for a couple more days. It felt so good to see it again. I was still doing removals at the time and I got soaked to the skin on pretty much every job So much for 'Blazing June'

"June just rains and never stops,
Thirty days and spoils the crops.
In July the sun is hot.
Is it shining? No, it's not"
Flanders and Swann - 'A Song of the Weather'
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/649.html

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I have that song on a phonograph recording. Cute tune.

Sun is shining here today. The sky is so blue, you'd hardly think it had been grey and ominous for two solid days.

12:49 Wimpy morning ... 28°F/-2°C.

We got about 17" of snow over the weekend. It's supposed to go up to 50°F/10°C in a few days, and get rain. That should take care of the snow! I'm not looking forward to this drive home. Plenty of black ice!

-3C first thing - rising from -6C at bedtime last night.

We've had frost for 3 days now and all the trees and plants are rimed white; just like a Christmas card.

I'm in my big winter jumper for the first time, as I have to go out to a meeting in an hour.


Frenchbean

Tuesday, December 9th 2003, 21.10

Been very windy today - always a sign of an approaching cold front in these parts. A low pressure system comes in from the northwest with winds spinning around it anticlockwise, and meets up with a high pressure system to the southeast with winds spinning around it clockwise. Result - very strong southwesterly winds.

And it's getting cold again. The temperature got up to 70ºF (21ºC) again today, but it's plummeting as we speak - currently 48º (9ºC) and forecast to go down to about 36 tonight, 32 tomorrow night. Even colder with that wind blowing though, feels more like about 26F (-3C).

Meanwhile I'm sat here in the warm with a nice cup of , watching Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets on HBO

Wednesday 10th Dec

Woke up to 10C this morning. Another specatacular sunrise happening as I type...

I'd been warned yesterday that Scotland was about to be . Not quite bikini weather, but a pleasant change from having to scrape ice off the car first thing.

The trees aren't nearly so pretty without the ice crystals...


F/b

It's not not nearly as cold this morning as I thought it would be... not in the apartment anyway. I did get a waft of cold air when I opened the door to let Dewey out though. It's 41ºF right now with a clear sky.

As long as I can remember I've always hated cold weather, and as long as I can remember I've always wanted to live in a place where's there no little or no winter. Austin isn't my ideal place - the summers are unbearably hot, and the winter can be as cold (colder even) and as dreary as in the UK, although it's nowhere near as long. I would much prefer somewhere with a more equable climate. Anywhere that palm trees can grow would be nice

Having said that, your mention of ice crystals has made me a bit nostalgic for crisp winter mornings Frenchbean

Palm trees grow in San Francisco, Gosho. I saw some in Union Square when I was there in 1996.

Palm trees also grow in some parts of Italy, I believe. Trouble is,
August is unbearably hot there. Rome pretty much closes down as people go elsewhere to escape the heat.

Palm trees grow in Torquay, so off you go sunshine

Are these palms real (i.e. biological), or fake (i.e., plastic or whatever)?

It is threatening rain here.

Why could we not have gotten the snow they got down east? We'd have had a white Christmas for a change...

Mudhooks, I sincerely believe that anyone who has gotten through a major early-December snowstorm (up to two feet in New England) could be forgiven for wanting to take a time machine back to strangle Bing Crosby so he wouldn't sing "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas". I keep hearing that song while I'm standing in the checkout line at my supermarket, and I just want to throttle the people responsible.

I know, I know... but having grown up with white Christmases and having had to put up with ice-storms instead for the last 15 years or so, I am dreaming of a white Christmas.

We used to have winters where we had 5-6 feet of snow in our back yard. One winter we had a blizzard that covered the front of the house up to a couple of inches from the top of our front window. We had to dig out from a basement window, put the snow into the washtub and melt it in order to get out.... For a kid, that is pure, unadulterated heaven.

The kids are lucky these days to get on day in the winter off due to heavy snow. We had 2 or three, often.

I would gladly ship my snow to you, if that were possible.

Palm trees grow here in austin too, but not real well. Perhaps I should've made it clear that I want somewhere which is a little more akin to palm trees natural habitat They seem to do quite well in the south of France... not that I've ever been there.

I wouldn't bother. The south of France is over-rated not to mention over priced and stuffed full of Parisians every summer. The worst thing of all is you always have the railway line to Italy at the top end of the beach which creates an awful disturbance all day long

I've heard that there are crooks and scam artists in some areas there, too.

There are palm trees in the west of Scotland too. And no crooks and scam artists at all


F/b

Which Scotland is it that has palm trees?

Are they indoors or outdoors?

Somehow, I'm finding this hard to believe.

Honest!

Scottish Scotland has palm trees. There are gardens on the west coast, including some owned by the National Trust for Scotland (most famously Inverewe) which grow palm trees. It rarely / never freezes on the coast there because of the influence of the Gulf Stream, so palm trees are fine.

And there's coral growing in the sea there too - and even as far north as Orkney. I kid you not. Honest injun.

Mind you, all this will be completely b******d if the Gulf Stream konks out, which all the doom and gloom mongers are forecasting at the moment. Because of climate change. If that happens, we'll be getting a Scandinavian climate.


Frenchbean