I woke up this morning to that rarity in Kirkcaldy, a heavy snowfall. This is only the third or so time in over twenty years here that there’s been enough to build a snowman. There must have been at least three inches. Very festive. Thank goodness I’m on holiday.
When I ventured out it wasn’t as cold as yesterday, though.
I’m hoping the game is off on Saturday as I’d like to watch David Tennant’s Hamlet and it starts at 5.05.

This morning it was pretty dark when I left the house. Well, it is only one week away from the shortest day and the overcast didn’t help. But it seemed much worse than last week and Friday was only three days ago. It was still more or less dark when I got to work and also when I left to drive home. So I’ve barely seen any daylight.

Dawn still gets progressively later over the next week and even though sunset has passed its earliest by now it gets later by a smaller margin so the days still shorten.

Had the clocks not changed in October I would already have had a month or so of travelling to work in the dark (with daylight only appearing around ten o’clock) and there would have been little or no lightness in the evening to compensate. Plus after the New Year another month of the same grind to get through.

(I’ve heard that people in Norway who only get one hour of daylight at this time of year don’t bother with it and just keep their curtains closed.)

As it is the mornings will be brightening from the beginning of January. And there’s a holiday season coming up. Reasons to be cheerful. Maybe.

I might give the game tomorrow night a miss, though.

That tree I mentioned last year is on the turn again.

I fogot to check it on Monday but made sure to yesterday and there were definite signs of yellow leaves.

Maybe it’s a species that just does this at the back end of August/beginning of September but it seems extremely early to me.

It might be another not very good winter.

This morning I woke to about a centimetre of snow lying outside. Typical, I thought. My week for the car.

As soon as I had scraped the windows and lights, got 50 metres from the house and onto a bus route it was all salted away, though. No hold ups, no problem. Work as usual.

It was just about all gone when I got home again. Ah well.

Apart from the ridiculous nature of the phrase itself, what snow event?

All I’ve seen is a few flurries. No roads blocked, no days off work, no sledging in the park. An “event” affecting only parts of the UK at the time is nationwide news? And the worst in Britain for 18 years? Falls like that are commonplace in the Highlands most years.

I know some places have had it badly, but on the other hand there was some twerp saying the road he was speaking from was impassable yet there was barely a covering on the pavement behind him.

I’ve seen bad snow and driven in it. An inch isn’t bad. If you can see the pavement it certainly isn’t bad. But people are not used to it, I suppose.

OK, the worst snow I’ve ever experienced was when I lived in Essex and Hertford. Howling in from the East like this week. But there wasn’t the same fuss nor absenteeism. People tried their damnedest to get to work. They even used skis to get in to the good lady’s workplace!

But that was in the long ago days before Thatcher taught us all to be selfish. This week it was just an excuse for a skivy day or two off.

And as to the supposed cost of the disruption; where did the figure of £1 billion come from? It looks pulled out of the air to me. If folk didn’t buy something today because they couldn’t get to the shops or the shop was closed they’ll buy it tomorrow or next week if they need it, so businesses will make any loss up. It’s a nonsense, yet seems to have been trotted out uncritically by journalists (who, by the way, just love things like this. Any whiff of disaster or anything out of the ordinary and they’re off, almost salivating at the prospect of hogging the screen for a few minutes.)

Rant over. Enjoy the rest of your winter.

Woke up this morning to snow on the ground in Kirkcaldy. It was more or less gone by one o’clock, though.

I remark on this since, in all the twenty years I’ve lived in this house, there has been less than a handful of times – this morning included – snow has actually lain for any length of time. (Note, here, the past participle of to lie, and not of to lay.) Only once was there ever enough snow for my sons to build a snowman or go tobogganing in Beveridge Park – which is just over the railway line from our street.

Partly this is because we live reasonably close to the sea and the temperature is therefore always slightly higher than just a hundred metres or so inland and so we rarely get snow. It is noticeable that the snowline generally starts a bit up Oriel Road. Its higher elevation as well as more distance from the Promenade helps explain that.

In my youth in Dumbarton snow was also relatively unusual – it used to start where the Clyde narrowed at Old Kilpatrick and the warming effect of the river lessened.

This did not of course apply in the winter of 1962-3 which was famously severe and during which I actually stood on Loch Lomond. I believe this was itself not a patch on the winter of 1947, which was in addition made to seem worse by the austerity of those post-war years, my father told tales of folk burning old shoes as fuel – but I wasn’t around then.

Otherwise I do not recall snow falling, and lying, before New Year, except once.

It’s still November and a week to go before December, at least five before New Year. A harsh winter ahead? In August I noted an early onset of leaves going brown.

I remember reading somewhere in the early autumn that the weather patterns in Britain this summer resembled those of 1962 and that such patterns had a tendency to repeat themselves after gaps of years.

Just what we need! Credit crunch, banking collapse, the world financial system tottering around our ears and a possible harsh winter. (You read it here second.)

During a break at work yesterday I noticed the leaves on one of the trees outside were turning yellow.
It’s still August!
There were more trees like this on the way home, and even more today when I travelled to Perth and back.
I don’t remember trees turning so early before.
After a not very warm summer – the second in a row – maybe I was more sensitive to it but this was dispiriting.
Just goes to show the Scottish weather is totally bizarre.
Only two years ago I took in the delights of Gayfield (note to that American Christian website; it is not Homosexualfield) on the last Saturday of October to see Dumbarton achieve their now traditional draw there. And it was warm.
Before this I’d never been warm in Arbroath in my life!