The snow only lasted a couple of days; even so, I doubt anyone will be using the watering can again this year.
When does discussing the weather stop being dull? Only when it’s local, probably. For us onlookers the New York hurricane was more of a disaster than a bout of weather. It’s hard to compete with something that big.
Now that we’ve put the clocks back it gets dark early: five-something in good weather, three-thirty or four if it’s overcast and foggy. The snow makes everything lighter. I was finding the dark mud in the ploughed fields to be slightly oppressive; even if it’s a bit colder with snow, it’s still more jolly. Anyway, it melted. The lake doesn’t freeze until Christmas.
Topsy got a few flakes on her nose.
A Bad Guide 
Tonight is when we put the clocks back. I am glad that this clock change is the one where you gain an hour, but I always like to point out that there is always the question of how you will use the extra hour. The fundamental question is, will you use it to catch on sleep or will you use it in waking ways and thus fall even further into sleep debt.
We got some excitement out of the hurricane here. A branch fell on the house, substantial enough to make a very audible thump but doing no damage. Our house in Westport, near the shore, was more nearly flooded than ever before. There will be perennials in flower beds by the house that are as unhappy about the salt as a great swath of grass was after Irene 14 months ago. If the storm had hit the southern Massachusetts coast the way it hit New York and New Jersey, we could have had big trouble there.
I like it that those far northern places like Norway, Scotland, and Alaska have such seasonal extremes of light and dark. I once spent half a year in Scotland and quite enjoyed that aspect of things.
For me, there’s never once been any question: I spend the extra time asleep. I always have. And after all, there’ll be no choice next Spring; I’ll be forced to lose an hour’s sleep.
I told dearie, Edinburgh is back on the cards for Alma. We might be going for a day or two to look around, if she can cram it into her schedule. I do hope so. The three things that are important to a parent for their children’s further education are location, location and location. And cost, of course – four…four things.
Oh, well, I’ve said it before, and it’s easy to say because it’s not my life, but Edinburgh (I’m speaking of the city, not the university specifically) is a lovely place to be.
As it happens, some weeks ago I enquired on a few American blogs whether hurricanes ever struck NYC. Nobody evinced the slightest interest. Mind you, I gather that Sandy had declined out of the hurricane category before it ran ashore. All considered, I’m mildly surprised that so few – or inadequate – precautions had been taken to stop the Manhattan tunnels and subways flooding.
When I said as much in a comment on one of the blogs, some fool ponderously attempted to explain that that would have been difficult.
I suppose one consequence might be a heightened interest in replacing the Thames Barrier in due course. Whenever that might be: the slow sinking of the SE of England will presumably continue indefinitely.
dearieme, did you have some plan for keeping the water out of the tunnels and subways?
I remember a terrific hurricane in about 1990 that just missed New York. There were XXXs of masking tape on some people’s window panes for years afterwards. I thought of the Thames Barrier too. It may be that there’s too much exposure to the water on all sides to build anything like it in New York. Perhaps it will become a latter-day Venice. A few years ago everyone was saying that New York’s sewers, water supply, bridges and tunnels were only built to last 100 years and the time was now up – what ever happened about that?
“the slow sinking of the SE of England will presumably continue indefinitely”
I hope so, but if not you can come and live with us. We’re at nearly 200 metres above s.l., the same as the 66th floor of a NY skyscraper – near the top of the Chrysler Building, say.
We were planning to retire to that place in Westport–whenever retirement time comes. Getting a lttile uneasy suddenly about the idea that it may not be there when we need it.
I think the London Underground has steel barriers that swing shut to close the tunnels in the event of the River Thames overflowing its banks.
When I mentioned our Irene/Westport experience to an old friend of the family last week, with emphasis on the early-morning period when I was sitting there looking out the big windows and hoping they would not be shattered by the wind, he recommended that taping thing. He said that you have to apply the tape in an irregular pattern, so that it inhibits the piece of glass from vibrating at whatever its resonant frequencies may be.
My father had his house in Australia raised a storey into the air, on stilts, to avoid floods. I ought to have asked him how it was done; unfortunately it’s too late now, he’d be 100.
He could be right. One problem with masking tape is if you leave it on for too long it becomes very hard to remove it – not just because of lethargy, but the sun bakes it on to the glass.
There’s an article in the Sunday edition of the NY Times that has three proposals for preventing water from entering the city. I can’t judge whether they’d work well, but assuming they do, I like the first one best. Of the third, the one that’s most like the Thames Barrier, it says : “Mr. Murphy’s barrier would be run by a trained staff and would operate on emergency power in the event of an electrical failure”, which is nice.
We lived in a Queenslander in Brisbane, up on stumps. The standard joke to incomers was that they were built like that because crocs can’t climb stairs. But in fact our house touched the ground at the back (we were on a steep slope) which is how the cats came to bring us snakes to the kitchen door. Ugh.
NYT: “… managed retreat, in which people would cede low-lying areas to the sea …”: that’s underway in bits of East Anglia – the last government decided that some land just wasn’t valuable enough to be worth the expense of defending. (Though there were allegations that a bit of land belonging to Hilary Benn, the cabinet minister, was mysteriously exempt from this edict. I dismissed the very suggestion that a fourth generation MP and son of former Labour Cabinet Minister Tony Benn and educationalist Caroline Benn would exert some sort of claim to privilege.)
Tony “Big” Benn doesn’t do too well in Ben Pimlott’s great biography of Harold Wilson, coming off as a slightly nitwitted opportunist (as opposed to the other, brighter, opportunists like Wislon himself). The Benns do have some principles, though. Holland Park School, where Hillary & co. were sent, wasn’t called the Eton of the comprehensives in the early 60s; it was a rough place and a scary prospect when I was at primary school (luckily I avoided it).
Is it true that crocs can’t climb stairs?
As I’ve mentioned before, I once read of crocodiles that “their powers of locomotion on land should not be despised.” But as far as I know this meant on the flat.
Yes, I know they’re very fast movers, considering how short their legs are.
I met an educationist once whose own children were at Holland Park at the same time as young Benn: he told me that the secret of the leading Labour people who made a fuss about sending their children there was that they spent handsomely on private tutoring. Like Blair in a later generation.
The weather is so sunny it looks as if the snow is sand on the 3rd photo. Norway isn’t getting closer to the Sahara, is it?
It was quite thin, I suppose. Nothing you could ski on.. Then the snow completely melted…and right now it’s started to snow hard again.
Watching these photos about snow I understand why I’ve seen some cranes near here some hours ago. By the way, this year they have come a bit delayed; really the crop of acorns is behind schedule.
The acorn trees are so tall that you have to harvest them with cranes ?
No, Stu, these cranes have a crop and a gizzard. And a blizzard.
As far as I’m concerned, the only bird used by people to “crop” (actually fish or catch) is the cormorant. Here we normally knock down these trees to fatten up our black pigs.
Business before nature: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hermosell/6680953589/
>Empty
Thanks for teaching me these meanings of crop and gizzard. I hope to digest them… in my mind.