A snowy London

[CarolineW]

This is completely bizarre.  I'm looking out of my window at 6 inches of snow - and it's still snowing!  Now, if I still lived in the North of England I wouldn't bat an eyelid at 6 inches.  And I would certainly think nothing of it in Germany.  But this is London - and London doesn't get snow!!!  Maybe a light dusting occasionally, but that's it.  So it feels completely surreal to see the streets, everything, covered in a thick white blanket.

Two thoughts keep running through my mind.  One is that there will be complete chaos tomorrow (or rather, later today).  I don't seriously think that London will be geared up with snow ploughs et al to deal with this quantity of snow, because it just doesn't get snow usually.  So I'm expecting that things'll pretty much grind to a halt.

The other thought is, If London is like this - what is the state of the rest of the country?!  I can't see my daughter going to school tomorrow, so we'll put on our snow boots and walk down to the shop to get a newspaper, and find out what's happening in the rest of the country.  Or at least - I will.  She's grown out of hers now, and it didn't occur to me for a minute to replace them.  I mean, we live in LONDON.  You don't need snow boots here.  Hmmm, with continuing snow forecast for the next few days, perhaps I should reconsider that ... 

The good news, though, is that I currently still have an internet connection, even though the Sky TV has been turned off.  Theoretically we were to lose both at midnight, until the new supplier cuts in in about 2-3 weeks.  (Who knew it would be so difficult to change?  ).  Driving might be out of the question right now - but I can still surf 

[Thermomixer]

Doesn't really sound like global warming at your end of the world 

Things ground to a halt here in Melbourne with a power outage to top it all off on Friday at 6:30pm !!! Thanks to the government's intervention.

I saw a report that $$$Millions were wiped off our economy last week due to the weather.  We are used to having 3 or 4 days over 40 degs.

Trains were stopped due to warped rail lines, then in WA a storm wiped out the sleepers from under the tracks and derailed a goods train and the main east-west rail link is down.

Still we can surf as you pointed out Caroline - hope you're not without internet too long 

[CarolineW]

Urk!  Sounds awful, Thermomixer 

I can't really imagine Melbourne without power ... did it last for long? 

[Thermomixer]

Just for 2 hours for most of Melbourne.  Right as people were coming home to cook dinner, sitting down to watch TV in air-conditioned comfort.

Funny, the people complaining about how bad it was without air-conditioning.  My wife said "They should have been around 40 years ago - we didn't have air-conditioners - it is not the end of the world!!!" 

But it was bad - people died as a result - 30 or so heat-related deaths, so not a laughing matter.

[Amanda]

Same here in Adelaide.
Power outages to try and share the load in our horrific heat.  Some areas were without power for an inexcusable 24 hours and there have been many deaths here too.

[brazen20au]

sounds awful for the aussies - were people told how to get help / where to go if they couldn't cope with the heat?

caroline, sounds lovely! any pics???

[Amanda]

sounds awful for the aussies - were people told how to get help / where to go if they couldn't cope with the heat?

caroline, sounds lovely! any pics???

Our wonderful Premier suggested that people go to shopping centres to escape the heat!!
With the heat ongoing the central bus station has been opened up 24 hours to allow people to go there to sleep at night.  having said that, last night was very pleasant.

Caroline, the news here today is reporting extraordinary weather and snowfalls in your country.  Sounds like the novelty will wear off pretty quickly although if school cancelled at least the kids will be pleased!!

[cookie1]

I didn't think that much about the east-west rail link being out until yesterday and I popped down to the shop to get milk and a bit of fruit, and half of the fruit and vegie area was empty. I asked why and was told that it's because the east-west link is out. I was disgusted as we grow heaps of stone fruit here, why can't we use that? There was heaps of tomatoes and grapes but very few apricots and plums.

Caroline, the weather over there sounds amazing. There was a picture of a London bus in our daily newspaper today with the snow falling. To a person who has never lived with snow it looked beautiful, but I can imagine the difficulties it presents.

Amanda, do the schools over there have air conditioning? I hate hot weather

[brazen20au]

the school i went to as a kid didn't have air con, but ryan's kindy (he had his first day of full time school yesterday) does

[CarolineW]

Well, it looks beautiful to us too, Cookie1    But convenient it ain't!  My husband managed to get into work on the bus today, so that's good.  I wanted to drive to the allotment to check on our hens, but the side roads are still too bad (we had a foot of snow in the end).  So I've had to ask our friend who lives by the allotments to do it again 

DD's school is still closed.  The snow finally stopped today, and the sun came out.  So it was rather fun, actually    DD and I have built a snowman which helped us to clear the paths at the same time.

DH took some photos yesterday, by the way Brazen, so hoping to get those off him and work out how to upload them here.

School may well be open tomorrow, so that would be good.  Especially as it's forecasting a lot of snow again on Thursday and Friday!!!!

Meanwhile, I still have the internet.  No idea when it will go off - I've now been told it can be any time between now and in 2 weeks that it's cut off.  So surfing through the snow while I still have the chance 

[brazen20au]

excellent, can't wait to see caroline!  where are you btw?  any signs of anymore or is that it for now?

[CarolineW]

We're in the Greater London Borough of Bromey, Brazen.  So in other words, the outer parts of London.  Beyond us, it's firmly the county of Kent.

[CarolineW]

Well, I failed dismally at working out how to post photos here - perhaps someone could let me know?  However, meanwhile my husband uploaded a video clip to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJSoQp35C6Q for me.

Off to bed now.  Night night everyone.

[Amanda]

Tanks for that link, Caroline!  The children looked adorable and they are certainly enjoying the snow.
It will be 38C here again today, so it was nice to see something cool!

[Thermomixer]

Well, I failed dismally at working out how to post photos here - perhaps someone could let me know? 

Hi Caroline,  to the left hand side at the bottom of the box when posting a message is + Additional Options....  If you click on that there is Attach: and you can Browse on your computer to find what you wish to attach.

Best to have the photos of less than 800x600 pixels

There is a link to how I told poor baf65 to do it here : http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php?topic=191.0

Somebody like Warren or Karen may be able to do it more easily.