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January 09, 2003
Thursday
 
 
London in Winter
Perry de Havilland (London)  UK affairs

I love snow, but in London we often get none at all and only very rarely does it snow heavily, which is to say, actually leaving a nice white carpet (yes, I know... that hardly counts as snow at all by some standards).

Yesterday however, I got my wish, with the heaviest snowfall in London in 12 years...



The view down my street

It will be mostly gone by tomorrow in all likelihood but it at least I get a day to enjoy the ephemeral splendours of winter.

Comments

Anywhere else, that would be called a dusting !!

:-)


Posted by MommaBear at January 9, 2003 10:39 PM

Yes but like poverty, it's all relative.


Posted by cydonia at January 9, 2003 11:04 PM

MommaBear's right - it's only a dusting - but it's more than we've had here in Aberdeen so far this winter!

Enjoy it while it lasts and ask the council to get the snowploughs and gritters out :-))


Posted by Alan G at January 9, 2003 11:06 PM

It's the concept of the snow that is important...heh, you park on the wrong side of the road ;-)


Posted by Brian at January 9, 2003 11:54 PM

I'd be willing to send 10 or 12 inches of the four feet of snow we've had here over the past couple of weeks. It would give us someplace to dispose of the snow we've removed from the streets and piled up here and there.


Posted by DCE at January 10, 2003 12:29 AM

I'm in Phoenix, Arizona. The temperature at night for the last few nights has been 60 degrees F. It's also been cloudy and raining. I've taken to sleeping with my window open and the fan on high. It's quite nice.


Posted by slak- at January 10, 2003 01:23 AM

This is what it's been looking like about a thousand miles from Atlanta.

It's been nearly fifteen years since I've seen this, but that doesn't mean that I've forgotten what it's all about.


Posted by Billy Beck at January 10, 2003 07:38 AM

How well I remember the not-so-ephemeral pleasures of unexpectedly iceskating over frozen slush in the streets of Finchley ...
You have very ritzy street lights. Where is that, I can't identify it?


Posted by Dave Farrell at January 10, 2003 08:55 AM

did you get out in it?


Posted by sarge at January 10, 2003 11:05 AM

Billy Beck: Yes, now THAT is snow! The bottom picture on your page is a broken link however.

Dave Farrell: It is Upper Cheyne Row, in Chelsea.

Sarge: It is not exactly 10 foot deep drifts!


Posted by Perry de Havilland at January 10, 2003 12:24 PM

You want 10-ft drifts? Come visit. Boston's getting a ton of snow this year and I, for one, am already sick of it. (Despite a childhood in the "lake effect" snow hell of Cleveland, Ohio, I don't like the stuff at all).

Let's switch houses for the winter, you and me ;)


Posted by shannon at January 10, 2003 04:35 PM

What's "snow"?

From Los Angeles,


Posted by Emily at January 10, 2003 05:13 PM

Perry (broken image): bleedin' hell. I wonder if it's about time for me to stop trying to post Web stuff.

Anyway, the thing's up, now; one more shot of the GlobalWarming™ in action.

All in all, it was a lovely day for a walk with a rifle.


Posted by Billy Beck at January 10, 2003 06:36 PM

[snark=1]
Global *WARMing*, anyone?
[snark=0]

yeah, I know, but...


Posted by J S Allison at January 10, 2003 10:21 PM

Snow breaks down inhibitions. A London policeman, complete with fancy helmet, was spotted on the north side of the Millennium Bridge sneakily making snowballs and throwing them at boys from City of London school below him. My son spotted him and naturally responded with a couple of well aimed missiles of his own.

About 50 years ago as a very law abiding little boy even I could not resist the urge to throw [successfully] a snowball at a policeman on his bicycle. The splat it made on his heavy coat is still a happy memory.


Posted by Gerald Hartup at January 11, 2003 01:02 AM

We are looking for some of that here still! Looks nice.


Posted by peat at January 11, 2003 03:47 AM

Here in Rochester NY we've had snow 19 days in a row, averaging at least as much per day as what your picture shows. The current forecast predicts snow for at least another eight days. Since I bought my car in Tuscaloosa, it doesn't have a rear-window defroster, which makes getting to work tricky. Count your blessings.


Posted by Dr. Weevil at January 11, 2003 04:00 AM

Toronto, -8C, 5 inches of snow, no problem.

London, -2C, dusting, freeze to death on station platform as it was probably 'the wrong sort of snow'.


Posted by Philip Chaston at January 11, 2003 10:40 AM

London proves itself to have the true european quality with its rare snowfalls. I visited London in 2000 and it snowed 2 inches on December 27. It was a gift. I was there for only two weeks. No where else in the world matches the beauty of London in snow.


Posted by Jasveer Singh at June 5, 2003 09:30 AM