Maybe about two weeks after last autumn's surprise UK freezing-snap, I got chatting with someone taking a dinnertime break from local construction-work by the local waterway. Turned out he was Ukrainean, working over here for a year, only been here a week but staying with his mother, who had been here (perhaps with her younger children) longer. (I pegged him as maybe late-teens, i.e. not yet so close to potential call-up-age, but I didn't ask, or dive into the other offered details.)
The weather at that time was back out of the recent freezing rangs, almost balmy. I recall, the morning it changed, having wandered outside to encounter open-air temperatures notably warmer than were in my kitchen... Maybe 15+°C vs the 12-ish°C that is set as my acceptible minimum away from the bedrooms or living-room, which actually felt like a warm mistral-like wind, at the time, having been used to the subzero outdoor temperatures and clearly becoming habituated to cooler ranges that I'd been happy to sustain (livable) inside my hermetically-sealed home (I later opened all the windows, imported a bit of heat for zero additional heating-bill, as it was never going to equalise quickly enough through the efficiently insulated doors, windows and walls). By the time of this encounter, I was wearing a jacket only for the pockets (and overheating on hills, on my walks, having to take it off).
This kid, amongst other things, remarked at the warm weather, but he'd not been here for long enough to note the changes. He was referencing back in Ukraine (didn't ask which bit, I know it's (still!) a big country). He gestured something that I first took to mean that he'd be wearing short trousers, currently, if he wasn't in his full-body reflective PPE/construction-garb, but then transpired to be how far up his legs the snow would be for him!
Being both British and exactly as verbose as you'd imagine I'd be, I gave him a brief overview on British weather (i.e. changable/gulf-stream-warmed oceanic systems, though we're at Hudson Bay(/~Muscovite) latitudes, rather than the more predictable continental seasonality that I guessed he was used to). Mainly that we'd were often surprised by the weather, and that if we got snow (not always a given), it'd probably cause an amount of chaos for everyone when it first hit (whether it's a fraction of an inch drifting into the kerb-side of London roads or a decent fraction of a foot, or more, around my area and significantly more not far from me if I drive up into the hills). Oh, and that we were unlikely to get much before the end of January (but could get a surprise sprinkling at pretty much any time until at least June).
NB: Obviously we actually got more snow than I predicted, over the period just after New Year, as part of another cold-snap/etc, so I was slightly off reality. Not sure what he now thinks of my general overview (not prognostication!), hope he remembers I specifically said that it almost always ultimately surprises us, whatever weather actually digs in from one week to the next.
So we're now back down from the more recent 10-ish°C post-freeze of the post-New Year. It's about 3°C outside, right now (an hour or so after sunset), predicted to be 0°C overnight, but rising again and we'll be getting rain (not snow) during various spates of precipitation over the next week or so. Currently seeing 6-8°C highs over these next few days (but high winds, both with and without the rain), the lows being at least a notch above freezing. ((OTOH, I'm going some way south for the weekend, should get away from the winds, but where I'm going may have 0-3°C range, while I'm there (mostly stuck indoors, anyway), and still some bits of rain. Nothing I can't weather.))
In other words fairly normal weather for January, "whatever normal is". Although merely a couple of decades ago, the equivalent weekend trip (only to somewhere a little more to the north than now, in those annual incarnations) I do believe I did see a dusting of snow happen around the hotel, in the morning, more likely than not. I suspect we're getting less of that these last few years. Though, when we do, it'll probably be more so. Anecdotally speaking, of course.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 15458988 times)