Waiting for the snow...

[Annpan]

Waiting to see how we will be affected by the snow tomorrow, we are quite high up (220m or thereabouts) and we have a severe weather warning....
It doesn't usually get this snowy and cold here this early in the winter, we already have 2 cm from the night before last, it has been so cold everything is frozen solid so if and when the snow does start it will lie. Brrrrr....

[Green Aura]

Not started here yet, Annpan and it's supposed to be coming in from the north west. It is a bit nippy though - I don't think we'll be reducing the size of the boiler firebox just yet.

[StripyPixieSocks]

I was so happy this morning when I got up and saw white... then I was disappointed it was only frost... our car was frozen over inside and out when we went shopping earlier lol

I really, really miss the snow coming from Cheshire, I haven't really seen much of it down here other than about a centimetre that soon burns off in the morning...

So, please feel free to send it my way, could do with cheering up

[Milims]

I have to confess I hate the stuff! Ok it looks nice when you wake up in the morning and the world is white - but it's bl**dy freezing! I hate the fact that all the kids slide on the ice and polish it so that unsuspecting people walk on it, slip and land on their backsides! And just don't get me started about snow balls!! Nope - give me a crisp autumn day or a warm spring day any time!

[invisiblepiper]

Been having incredibly heavy frosts here on the coast. Snow tends not to lie for long - but I think the North and East are more likely to get it anyway.
Yep very cold indeed!

[Odsox]

I have severe misgivings about the coming winter.
Here on the peninsula we very rarely get any frost at all, but when we do they are fairly insignificant and usually in February or March.
It's the Gulf Stream that keeps us warm, hence the frosts in Feb & March when it's at it's coolest.
We have been here for 15 years now and this year was the first time we have had a frost before Christmas ... 4 days running we had an "all over" white frost.
"All over" as in usually we just have white patches in sheltered spots ... under hedges, that sort of thing.
So heaven knows what it's going to be like when winter is supposed to be here ... instead of the late autumn it's supposed to be now.

How was your snow you Scots posters ?

[Green Aura]

No snow at all!

In fact it's been raining and the icy patches from the previous days' frosts have all melted. Maybe the gulf stream still clings to Cape Wrath.

Still pretty nippy though

[linzibean]

No snow here, it's actually much warmer than recently, just rain for us! Can't say I'm not used to it ;)

[Annpan]

No snow either.... I had to know that because we had bought in extra supplies, carted extra wheelbarrows of wood down to the house, made arrangements to go next door for lunch if we were all snowed in and told OHs work he might not make it in on Thursday or Friday....

We woke up this morning to find that most of the snow we already had thawed too.

Most disappointing


But I am with odsox on this.... I am sure we are in for a rough winter.

[Milims]

Do you scots posters want some of our snow? It snowed continually until 12.30pm today so that there was about a foot of the damn stuff all over the place. The bus company called school and said that they were sending busses to collect the kids form some areas. The town kids and some of the others had to stay for the rest of the day - much to their chagrin. There were only about 200 kids left in a school of about 2000 - but the head insisted we stay open. My son and several others appeared in my office in bear feet and dried their socks on my heater!When I finally escaped I couldn't drive the car out of where I'd parked properly so I had to go out another way only to have to dig myself out at the other end. My daughter arrived home in tears because she'd been really worried all day about how she was going to get home - she wasn't sure if her taxi was going to make it and the school opposite had closed but not hers so she was really confused.
On the up side my boss did go and buy us some hot chocolate!

[Millymollymandy]

Are there many snow ploughs and road clearing/salting/gritting etc in Scotland, or at least in the parts where snow is a regular occurence?

When I lived near the Swiss border there was a lot of snow but the ploughs were out the moment it started and everything was so well organised, the council workers cleared pavements either by hand or with pavement snow ploughs and snow was really quite a pleasure (apart from having to clear our own driveway to get to the ploughed bits!). I naively imagined it would be like that throughout France but here in Brittany where we rarely see snow of course when it does come it is a disaster like in England!

[Milims]

We aren't far from the Scottish Border - so I guess we kind of come under the similar weather. In this area they don't seem to bother with the roads around the villages. The only road that is given any attention seems to be to one that leads from the RAF base to the town!

[Green Aura]

They usually grit regularly at the first warnings of snow - 2-3 times a week and the roads are largely kept clear. I've only seen one gritter this year so far so I'm wondering if Highland Council has fallen foul of the financial problems that are afflicting most of the world.
A lot of the councils in Scotland, for some reason, thought it was a good idea to invest in Iceland banks and have now been well and truly stung when their government closed the banks. I bet Iceland manage to still grit their roads though!

[ina]

Must admit I'm glad the stuff has more or less thawed away. I'm still trying to get moved - got the flu, just to add to the delights of flitting - and first we here, and then the place I'm moving to were snowbound for a few days. So keep fingers crossed - I'm a week behind schedule, and although they aren't actually kicking me out of the house, camping on a futon isn't my idea of spending the winter!

[Annpan]

Oh Ina, I am willing our warmer weather your way (it is a balmy 2oC)

The road through our village gets gritted around 4pm if we are expecting a heavy frost or snow, then it will pass at least once overnight too. The local farmers (I think) run the snow poughs, they have attachments for the tractors and Lordy, the noise they make.... If it is snowing heavily they usually get the road gritted and ploughed 2 or 3 times a day.
But we are on the top of a hill and each of the roads out of the village dips down and climbs sharply again... I am told that in days of snow or blizzards the dips in the roads get full of snow (metres of snow) and the village has been known to be snowed in for a week... in recent history.