The Met Office were warning of more heavy snow on Friday. As usual it was hard to know whether these warnings applied to our part of the country, but local radio seemed confident that substantial falls would be confined to the high ground, so I set off out with no qualms about being able to get back home in the evening.
My confidence seemed justified, despite the bitterly cold wind that was blowing intermittently all afternoon & a few small but wet flurries as darkness fell (at least the days are getting noticeably longer now). And since it was raining when I came out of Sainsbury’s I naturally assumed the danger of snow had passed.
So it was a surprise when I looked up as we got to the village to see snow falling & everything blanketed with white – the road had obviously not been gritted.
Would the bus even be able to get up the hill?
No problem – these modern buses don’t struggle like the old ones – the lower centre of gravity must help with the traction.
I got off into a mini blizzard, the snow stinging my face when it hit but no point even trying to open an umbrella in that wind. Half way down our hill I passed a couple coming up, determined on their night out (not youngsters but somewhere in their middling years), their bootprints coming up & mine going down the only sign of life outside. With no gritting all surfaces were covered with a good inch of wet but soft snow which is easy enough to walk on.
It came as a pleasant surprise to find that my jacket (just the down one, I hadn’t bothered with the heavy duty rain jacket) was not wet through, though whatever it was that fell off when I shook the big red woollen scarf which had been wrapped round my head & neck skittered & scattered over the floor with a sound like grains of rice or small beads. I was even more astounded to find that the bit of my hair that hangs down below the scarf was solid with ice.
A hearty supper of proper pork sausages from a local butcher, roast parsnips & a mound of steamed courgette, leek & broccoli, followed by ginger sponge pudding, swept away even the memory of cold.
The snow continued to fall in bursts throughout the evening but I was comforted to see, when I looked through the kitchen window, that although the top of the leylandii hedge just over the back wall was wearing a thick white blanket on its flat top, it had not settled at all on the top of the hedge on the far side of the field; it had not been that one’s turn to be trimmed this autumn, so its more raggedy top provided no similarly hospitable bed. There seemed no threat that we would wake up in the morning to find ourselves unable to move outside.
We got a bit anxious a few years ago when there was a campaign to introduce draconian controls on the use of leylandii – well maintained, they provide invaluable protection from westerly winds, rain & snow. And noise too; the local factory, which provides much needed employment, is also surrounded by a well maintained hedge.
By Saturday midday the road surfaces were clear, though the pavements were still thickly covered & children were sledging boisterously & happily in the fields. As I stood at the bus stop I witnessed the snow suddenly slip & slide off the roofs & windscreens of cars parked nearby – a small reminder of how sudden & frightening such falls can be, a lesson in the need to take care when passing near drifts on the slopes of the hills.
Saturday’s weather was cold but otherwise uneventful, until it began to rain quite heavily in the evening. There were even a couple of prolonged rolls of faraway sounding thunder later on. And so we once more have warnings of floods over much of the country. Earlier in the week local radio told us of a team from the council’s environment department who are out every morning at 9am measuring the depth & degree of wetness of the snow lying over the area, so that floods can be more accurately predicted.
At least we are learning to be better prepared for whatever the weather may throw at us next.
