Woollymummy

Staring out the window towards the East, I see there is a bank of cloud approaching but a great big patch of clear blue sky coming first, I have not seen that all day. Took the washing in, nicely freeze dried and stiff.

Will it get as far as Oxford, do you think?

So many frogs happily mating in the pond today, newts out crawling and basking on the paths and playground, I hope they don't all get frozen solid.

Gorgeous beautiful sunshine in Eynsham; today all the frogs finished mating in the pond by the end of the rainstorm yesterday so sadly there is no more frog action to see, but lots of spawn. I hope they don't freeze to death by next week.

The predicted thaw is in full swing, even the drifts are going, birds are singing, the bus service has resumed, lots of puddles, blue sky and occasional sunbeams. The thing I will miss most apart from the actual snow and sledging is that interesting weather became the News, whole TV shows were dedicated to the Beast from the East, and people got to show generosity and compassion for each other in abundance.

We pretended it was cold outside today by staying in and ignoring the thawing slush, but it wasn't really chilly outside at all. Better sledging in powder, I didn't fancy wet sledging, I'm happy to wait until next year....

Lots of fun today, no school for kids or me, epic three hours out with sledges, cosy house when we got back, all my predictions and bragging to colleagues about the incoming snow was justified and turned out to be correct, wonderful Netweather model watching rewarded with proper Narnia-like outdoor beauty and luckily for us, no mishaps.

Radar says Oxford is going to get some just about now, and it is indeed lightly coming down now, not like the big daytime fluffy flurries we had off and on all day today, the kids were very excited, but hopefully thickening up soon. Quite exciting. Not sure whether to go to bed soonish or not....

My partner was away in Europe in a tour bus where the cold was so deep the inboard toilet tank froze when they got to Berlin, -22 or something. I was at home with two toddlers, we ran out of proper firewood and had to break up some old fence panels from the garden piles to burn in the log fire. Not comfy weather. Much better now as we have a stove which warms the room properly.

Totally perfect day for kids at school, every twenty minutes, yet another snow storm of fluffy white dusty flakes, nothing sticking but everything looked wintry, some of the kids still coming to school with no coats.....

If I don't get some noteworthy snow this week then so far I owe two homemade cakes and a packet of little chocolate eggs to some of my classes to whom I rashly bragged about my inside Netweather knowledge, even showed them forecast charts.....come on Beast!

Am I in the right regional discussion group, or is Oxford in a different one? Anyway, we just had a few flakes.

Probably more likely eroded by our own hot air swirling round, mixing with a bit of Gibraltar hot air and then back again, primarily driven by the heat coming out the back of our overworked laptops.

Your regional details don't show up on a phone, well, not on mine anyway.

As a treat I showed all my classes a bit of the GFS model running at the end of their lessons, plus a photo of my 1991 igloo and gave a quick tutorial on how to build it using a long stick in the centre to get the radius the same all the way round. They were super impressed, and a bit mystified as to why there has been no snow forecast yet. Quite a lot of them knew about the SSW and the easterly winds - I hope I haven't got their hopes up regarding snowfall - even a little bit will be good for sledging, but you need quite a depth to make an igloo.

As much as I am enjoying the excitement of watching the models remain so consistent as D-day approaches, and as much as I feel smugly prepared (new waterproof trousers and new sledges for playing/carrying shopping), I am worried too that so many people are not prepared enough for worst case scenarios. I hope you and you colleagues continue to do your work safely wherever possible - be safe folks!

Is it too soon to warn my older relatives to get more logs ready? They live in a freezing cold house, and do not necessarily have enough supplies in all the time.

I noticed that too....My Valentine's pressie to my dear children was for each of them, a pair of cosy waterproof ski trousers, I am always hopeful that this could be the winter we can have more than two days of snow fun.

Speaking of 1991, here is a photo of our hard work that year, built by me and my friends, we slept one night in it (needed more bedding but wasn't too bad!); it lasted until a week after the thaw. Excellent fun, I doubt we will get this much snow in the next few weeks, but if you have bored children nearby, tell them try and make one of these. It even had "stained glass" windows, food colouring and water in the freezer overnight.

No moaning from me folks: my reverse psychology jinxes all worked (do not buy Davos sledge, leave a full load of washing on the line, leave new Christmas tree and half a load of logs out on the drive uncovered): so the result was a full day of snow, sledging, winter fun and exercise, plus the joy of finding out in the evening that all local schools have a Snow Day today. Proper Winter. Proper Snow. Narnia. Yesterday: all buses cancelled so Christmas Shopping in Oxford not possible, today, buses are running so sneaky extra shopping day/sledging on alternative pistes now a possibility. Very happy :-)

This is Olaf. He was made in the summer for the village scarecrow competition, out of old sheets and gaffertape. We decided to leave him up for months so he could get to enjoy some real snow - he finally got lots yesterday!

I will add that ALL affordable Davos wooden sledges have vanished off Ebay in the past few days, missed my chance again. They'll all be back on next week after the Non-Snow-Event is over......(I am trying reverse psychology on the weather, again)

Phone full, so no pics, but bright red sun at high noon is very very spooky, all the kids terribly excited at our school, much too exciting to concentrate.

ah thankyou none of the links to uptodate images seem to load at work today :-( I will have to check at home later.

Looks so ominous.....not sure how up to date this image is.......