Sunday, 24 March 2013

Snowy Spring

If you’re expecting a detailed insight into this year’s unconventional weather, with quotes from learned meteorologists as to why the white stuff is back in spring, then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

Britain is currently on its third bout of winter weather. The first was welcomed by teenagers and children everywhere as the possibility of school closures emerged and parents went into panic mode. Shouts of “You’ll be fine, there’s only four inches!” and “See it’s not that slipp—Ouch!” rang out across the country as parents struggled to get their children out of the house.

The second, longer spell of snow arrived in February, and teenagers and pupils everywhere thought themselves the luckiest people in the world, and once again parents despaired. Park hills were worn down even more, with countless numbers of sledges turning hills into sheet ice, again. The makeshift tobogganers with various sizes of tarpaulin sheets, bin lids and, once I spotted, a garage door arrived in their masses, only to be very much out done by the snowboarders.

We thought that was it, no more snow: hooray! A month later, however, on spring equinox, the weather reporters predicted snow, and then went into hiding. They were right.

Three days solid, the white stuff fell from the sky. Scotland had power outages, there were abandoned cars and crashes everywhere. Twenty to forty centimetres fell in the peak district, prayers were said for anyone going on D of E, and everyone shut the doors, windows and curtains and broke out the hot chocolate. Snow is fine, just not when the seasons say it should be spring.

Not only was there snow, but poor south west England had landslips and floods. “This is it. The apocalypse is upon us. Everybody hide!” was what everyone was secretly (or not) thinking. Alas, no apocalypse, just an unusual numbers of colds for March.

So is it that it for poor Britain? I seriously hope so. I’ve run out of hot chocolate.