The last few days have been very cold. Even this morning there was still plenty of snow on the ground. But the temperature rocketed upwards today, to 11º or 12ºC, and it rained quite heavily, thus taking out all the snow and filling all available drainage — including the river and, seen here, the canal — almost to overflowing. Three more hours after this picture was taken and all the remaining snow was gone, as if it had never been.
I have marking to do and didn’t really leave the house all day (well, OK, I went to the pub, but it was dark by then). The snow came, and this shot seems to sum up the day well enough.
I entitled this “November morning” before I looked more closely at the time it was taken. But somehow it feels like a morning, so I’m not going to change it.
The world turns. Bearing in mind that the earliest I have seen the sun reappear at one side of our house in the mornings is around 16th February, and assuming a basic symmetry on each side of the Winter Solstice, that means it’s about to disappear for the winter, an event that is rather less noticeable. But bearing in mind the clocks are going back in a few days, quite soon even this rather wan level of sunlight isn’t going to make it over the chimneys… and we’ll see it in February. (It’s not like winter in Tromsø though, that’s true.)
That’s definitely some rain coming in. The players are about to get wet, as, I imagine, are most of the people sat in the main stand to the left, with its rather inadequate roof. At least those of us stood on the ‘East Paddock’ of AFC Fylde’s Mill Farm stadium had more satisfactory cover.
Five minutes into the second half, and the cue came to watch the rest of the game from inside the clubhouse at Huddersfield Amateur FC (a place that has been seen before). Perhaps the visiting team, in orange, might have wished to join us, as they were at least 8 goals down by this point and we were nowhere near the end.
A sign of divine intervention above Lake Ontario this afternoon? Well, more likely explained by the fact that over there lies Billy Bishop Airport, Toronto’s downtown terminal for domestic flights. Something to look at, either way.
More weather, but it was better today, and anyway I don’t care as once again I am leaving the country. Whether conditions will be improved where I’m going, who knows. The first part of my journey was by rail — this shot was snapped at about 90mph somewhere in the vicinity of Peterborough.
I still have one walk left to do in my Lake District project and today might have been a day to go — but no. Good weather in 2024 has been at a premium. And so, that particular milestone will have to wait another three weeks at least.
I was supposed to be flying out of St Helena today, but I, and the, roughly, 75 other people due to make this trip have been obliged to stay there for another 24 hours thanks to the fierce and gusty winds which were blowing over the island, despite it being otherwise a nice, sunny and quite warm day. Of the six flights I have now made to and from St Helena, two of them have been so delayed. Well, never mind, there are worse places to wait it out. The anemometer was spotted above the Castle in Jamestown, and seemed appropriate. The wonkiness of the background is not my error: much of St Helena actually does look so non-perpendicular.
Depending on how I count the days in transit, today could be reckoned the 50th day I have spent on St Helena across my three trips — and it was, certainly, the one with the worst weather. Jamestown, on average, gets 9-10mm of rain in the month of May, yet at least that amount fell today. It started overnight, and this morning there was already a dirty brown stream running down Main Street and debouching into the sea. It carried on, too, heavy showers every few minutes all day, really quite foul weather. And at points up in the hills, correspondents reckon there might have been some 100mm (4 inches) of rain through the day. Not normal…
