We missed Snowmageddon, until it turned Red

It has been bitterly cold down her on the Bristol Channel area of Somerset, but apart from a light dusting that didn't stay around for long, we'd missed much of the Beast from the East. Until March 1st that is, when we joined much of the rest of the UK in Snowmageddon. 

 

I knew snow was forecast on Thursday, so abandoning the car, I boarded the 07:30 train into Bristol to go to work. Yes it was snowing, but nothing much. Around 9am, soon after the bacon butty and coffee to warm up, I had a text from Mrs Wessex_Reiver saying, the amber warning has been upgraded to Red, a danger to life and limb,  and over exactly where we live.  Not due until 3pm, but downloading stuff onto a pen drive by 11am I was heading home. In the 3 hours the temperature had really dropped but worst still the wind was gusting 40mph and my walk back to the station was absolutely bitter.

 

 

For the first hour I was home it felt like a damp squib. Ostensibly working on the laptop, my eyes kept observing the lack of anything happening outdoors. No snow, the wind was lively, but that was it. At 1pm I thought I'll have some soup and while stirring the victuals, a flake hurled itself across the window. Not the great saucer sized flakes we get normally here, but the size of a speck of dust. By the time I'd consumed the aforementioned broth, it was a whiteout - strange powdery snow blowing up, down, left, right in the strengthening wind. And it kept coming, and coming, and coming. 



 

We get a lot of storm force winds here but I've never experienced a night like it, near gale force winds propelling dry crispy snow across the landscape. In some areas the snow was literally blown away, in others it lay feet deep, often just feet from each other. So the volume of snow was low, though it made for an exciting night. The above picture was taken about 4am when the snow had finally stopped.

 

At 7am the sun came up - oh yes, it was snow all right. Not in the league of friends up in Northumberland who have had monstrous snows, with 12 drifts making roads impassable.  But for here, a microclimate area where snow is a rare thing, it lay 6-8 inches deep, deeper where drifting off the fields had occurred. A home day then.

 

Having a very important Data Protection spreadsheet to do, I of course ventured immediately outside to take some images. It is fully seeing snow on pots and fences, where only 24 hours earlier there was nothing.  And I can't remember ever seeing icicles down south. Used to get huge ones when I lived near the coast in Tyneside, but down here an inch is a goodly length. 

 

The soft powdery snow was wonderful to see in its drifting patterns, if it had been a free day I'd have bobbled out into the fields to see what shapes lay there. But with work beckoning, just a mooch around the house then, with a scientifically accurate depth measurement for the record - half way up my rigger boots... I'll suggest this important scale to Carol Kirkwood I think.

 

 

 

So there you go March the 1st we had snow, March 2nd it's still here. I really do feel for all the people trapped in cars and trains, but to be honest, this is how winters were until the early 1980's. I remember endless snowstorms and trudging to school in blizzards (the schools didn't shut then because we all lived nearby including the teachers). We lived opposite the golf course and spend days sledging there each year. But for the last three decades we've not really had winters. People have moved out into the country, moved away from home, or just decided to commute for fun, so this proper snow is a nightmare. I remember the late great Willie Poole saying of people who were moving to Glanton in Northumberland and commuting to Newcastle 35 miles away "just wait until we get a proper winter again, they'll never get in" Well poor old Northumberland has had a week of battering and no let up yet - stay indoors, stay safe.

 

It's not all doom and gloom though, this reed bunting was a real treat - only the second record for the garden. Redwing and fieldfares loafing about and this very territorial blackbird chasing anything that comes near away.  Tomorrow, it'll be 6 degrees and it'll all be gone. Nice while it lasted though.

 

November 25th 2014 - Winter's grip

"Tracks led everywhere on the tell-tale white mantle of snow. The roe, the rabbit, the fox and the hare had left their stains. The spoor of pheasant, woodcock and blackbird marked the surface where they had striven for sustenance beneath the snow-covered earth. Below a holly bush, where snow had not penetrated, the tiny wren, his tail cocked upright, flitted about amongst the leafy carpet. At the eastern end of Blackburn Lake the leafless silver birches stood out against the white background like witches' brooms"

So wrote Henry Tegner (1901-1980) in 1953 in his story of a roe deer, The Buck of Lordenshaw.

Henry Tegner was writer, naturalist and a deer expert; president of the Deer Society, firstly gaining his knowledge of deer in Dorset before later later moving to Northumberland. Here he continued his work from the village of Whalton near Morpeth.  He wrote 25 or so books, primarily centred around the Northumbrian landscape and the wildlife that it contained. The Buck of Lordenshaw is as far as I'm aware the only life-story of a deer that has been published. His description is as mesmerising and evocative as other more familiar works about a single species, such as Tarka the Otter and yet this life and death struggle of a roe deer in and around the Cragside Estate near Rothbury is largely forgotten. As is this wonderful author.

I have a first edition copy of that book next to me as I write, and flicking through the pages I am drawn back again to that part of remote Northumberland. This week in Somerset winter has finally showed it's first fingertip grip on a mild autumn, a light frost covered the fields. December next week yet snow, significant snow, seems far off. However Tengers words on the page I am looking at, transport me back to an often taken woodland walk in winter.

"Silence reigned over Cragside save for the soft whisper of the snow as it fell upon the fir tree... It intensified the boundless silence of the whole countryside".

It is a silence I remember fondly and hope to relive again this winter. Many is the time I have walked in the winter wood. Snow knee deep at the woodland edge slowly thins as I push forward past long dead summer vegetation into the corral of trees around me, into a silent world. Is the countryside silent? Muffled maybe. Snow provides the silence of the wild, save for the crepe and scrunch of boot on snow, a tactile satisfying sound no other substrate can mimic. Tread gently and my foot silently sinks into the opaque void, but, apply a little pressure, and the tell tale crepe of compressed flakes brings joy to my activity.  

Crepe, crepe, crepe my footfall softened. I hear my breath leaving me, billowing in a condensed cloud as I move. I am removed from the ground I walk over, soft snow obliterates form and shape, all is uniform, all is silent. I stop and listen. Nothing but silence. Nothing but the thick curtain of trunk and branch, dark against the pale sun bleached winter sky. The dark wood is silently observing me, and at leisure for the first warming rays of April sun. Then these woods which now sleep a deep midwinter's sleep will awaken to spring's choral, the willow warbler, the pied flycatcher, the chiffchaff and redstart will jostle for song borne soundscape.

Today though I am remembering the joy of a wood in winter, I revisit to a silent world, lost in thought, my stride is measured and steady. Lost in my own thoughts, time stands still, yet it has begun to snow, softly. Single flakes breakthrough the canopy mesh to float silently and alone to the woodland floor. I watch them, spinning in unison before being absorbed into the snow-mass within. Without, a heavy fall has begun, dark clouds against the white landscape, swirling flakes coating the trunks of the outermost trees. But, inside the womb like cavern of a winter wood, single flakes gentle fall, in silence. I catch one in my gloved hand. So light, so delicate yet in a moment it is gone, returned to its liquid state by my internal heat.

Light is fading now, I retrace and make my return across the fields. Illuminated from below, the landscape has a pearlescence to it,  unique to a winter snowfall. Even indoors the radiance of light from below adds a glow to a room that even without looking will confirm that indeed snow has fallen overnight. That terra firma pale glow extends dusk well beyond its scheduled timeframe. A buttermilk glow may further brighten the west sky. No torch is required to light my way home today. 

Trees silhouetted against the fading light stand isolated in the white of a countryside at sleep. Maybe a robin will break my reverie as the smoke of a cottage fire drifts listlessly up into the falling flakes.  The pheasant metallic nasal call likewise drifts from some unseen hedge, it is a sound of winter to me. The countryside is closing down for the day. Along the field I walk, my face both hot and chilled with the exertion against a cooling air. I'm home, where I shall sit warmly and wish it will all remain as I remember it, for another day. I never tire of snow.

Henry Tegner's daughter Veronica Heath carried on his country diary traditions and wrote for the Guardian for 35 years. In one of her last postings she recalled 6 of her personal favourites. For me, reading Henry Tegner's simple description of the silence of snow, did what all good country writing aspires to do, to simply transports memories into a clear view, the natural elements, the suggestion to a spirit of place.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/13/country-diary-highlights-veronica-heath

Images: Top to bottom:

Fallow Deer - Stock Gaylard Estate, Dorset 2007

The view from my home-office over to Wales 2011

The big field, East Grafton, Wiltshire. 2010

Through the hedge, Somerset 2012

Julie's Tree, Wilton, Wiltshire, 2011.

Somerset, deep and crisp and even

Well I know everyone is posting about the snow, but here along the normally sub-tropical always warm Somerset coast we've now had our share of snow. Last month when my parents had 2 feet in the North East, down here we had a dusting, it melted, but remained below freezing. Thankfully we escaped the worst of it.

Not by yesterday morning!!! It was forecast of course but at 5.30am when I got up and took this picture out the bedroom window we had about 2 inches, on sheet ice as it had been raining until about 4pm on Thursday. Anyway it didn't look too deep or bad so off I went to work, only to return 15 minutes later, limping the car home after failing to turn a corner on sheet ice, careering into a kerb and denting my tyre and wheel along the way. Given my Suzuki has a naff space saver spare I decided driving in ice and snow on one 15 inch 285mm wide and one 13 inch 80mm wide tyre on the front may not be a good option. Especially after what had just happened....so an enforced day off work then. And boy am I glad I did.

Bizarrely the snow was only really along the Somerset coast. Bristol had none, and Julie in Wiltshire had none. However, Weston super Mare, 6 miles from me had 5 inches by 10am and Wales 10 miles as the crow flies had chaos.

So I made the most of my day off, and decorated the dining room, with the odd visit to the garden to watch the birds who were now being fed industrial quantities of feed. And it was all quite pretty really, even the birds seemed to be taking it in their stride. But this photo of the wagtail was at 11am Friday. Not 10 minutes after this shot was taken, a humdinger of a blizzard came in off the Welsh mountains, across the Bristol Channel and my house was in the firing line. We hunkered down for the day and watched the blizzard rage....

........ to then awoke this morning to a real winter wonderland, Narnia had nothing on this part of Somerset on the last Saturday before Christmas.

First job then to clear the decking for the birds

And marvel at the scene in my back garden.

Next years Christmas card?

Or maybe this one....?

Stop taking photos..... we're getting hungry

But I have to say the view from my office window across to the Welsh mountains in the distance was absolutely breathtaking.

I've got my parents with me for Christmas, so had to go and pop to the supermarket for additional sprouts. Normally a 5 minute drive, but there was no way I'd drive today, especially with a dodgy wheel, so I walked with my backpack and wearing stout wellies; this meant I saw this view 20 feet from my front door, and.............

.... this one as I crossed onto the castle mound. Considering both these 2 photos were taken on my blackberry, I'm quite impressed how it coped with the exposure in the snow.

Julie was meant to be over here this weekend as we planned to go to the village carols by candlelight service tomorrow. She e-mailed me at 5.45am this morning to say the snow hadn't arrived. By 7.30 there was 6 inches in rural Wiltshire. Where she lives is high up, almost into Hampshire and very isolated. There was no way she'd get to me, or me to her. So to give herself something to do as the planned Christmas shopping was out of the question, she walked an 8 mile round trip to Great Bedwyn to get a morning paper (at the same time I was walking to the supermarket). Along her walk she sent me these 2 mobile phone images.

.....even if I say so myself, not a bad dump of snow in 2 hours!!!

Stay warm everyone

Wintery musings from Somerset

Blimey, this is the second posting in less than 24 hours (here). I must have had a bang on the head or paid the electric bill. Something like that. Well the news is all about snow, wintry conditions and how we're all heading into months of freezing temperatures. I've long thought it was an interesting omission of the climate change journalists a decade or so back, in that they forgot to tell us in the middle of their sooth sayings that we'll all frizzle in the summer, that in the winter there'll be a lot more energy in our weather systems, and therefore more moisture in the air, which when the air turns cold could lead to more snow than we've been used to of late. I'm not complaining for one. I love snow. Makes life difficult travelling, but it's beautiful to look at.

Unlike this chap who was seen walking in the 1/2 inch of snow we had this weekend on the Somerset coast. Note the sartorial elegance of his baggy trousers, the raffish tilt of his bobble hat, and what is he wearing under that fleece? It is a smorgasbord of bulges and sticky-outy bits. At least I think it is what's causing that effect. Anyway just after this we were chased by a herd of frisky bullocks, obviously desperate to discover the source of those many bulges. Maybe they thought is was hay!

So far, as alluded to, down here we haven't had much snow. More of a dusting really as can be seen from the window of my house this weekend. Its enough to keep me happy at the moment, especially as we're all travelling to WWT Welney on Friday to make a radio programme in front of a live audience on Saturday. I hope we get snowed in, then I can indulge in some birdwatching on the fens.

The snow that fell on Friday night was unexpected, as the forecast said it would miss us. And so in fabulous sunshine on Friday morning, I put my weks washing out.... Oh dear this was the view on Sunday morning, a mere 48 hours later. Eventually it defrosted itself and dried and was put away. But it was well rinsed through, and smelt fresh. By the end of the weekend the snow had all but melted here, but the temperatures were freezing all day yesterday and today I woke to more snow, the lightest of powdery snow gently falling as dawn broke.

What is worrying me is that although I have all the feeders out and full, there are hardly any birds about. Its puzzling. I back onto open countryside as far as the Black Mountains in Wales. I've only been in this house since December 2009, but lived just around the corner for 10 years and used to have loads of birds there. But here all is quiet. I appreciate my garden is mainly grass and decking, but at the back of me are many thick shrubs, then nothing but classic dairy farmland of grass and hedges for 2 miles to the Bristol Channel.

There are cats about, but there always have been. So where are they? I noticed on Ragged Robins blog she mentions a lack of collard doves. Funnily enough I saw my first one for ages this morning. Collard doves are in a decline for reasons no one really knows, but this weather must affect them as they are birds of much further south in Asia. Last winter took its toll on many birds at the northern edge of their range. Luckily for many a good breeding season helped restore the population balances, but this cold snap, if it is prolonged could cause another population crash of this years juveniles, especially of the smaller passerines, such as wren, goldcrest and so on. I hope they come to the feeders soon.

One bird I shall not worry about is the Jay. This glorious bird sits most morning outside my office window. Today I had my camera with me and managed to snap this shot through the glass. I tried to lift the window but off it flew. Jays are common in Clifton and used to be very secretive. Now though they are becoming bold, or bolder. And I love the fact they are around these busy streets. If jays weren't crows, or so common, people would be desperate to take photographs of them. Just look at the plumage of a Jay the next time you have a chance and see how beautiful it is, with that lovely flash of electric blue along it's flanks.

Another beautiful bird is the goldcrest. Slightly harder to see in the wild so I was thrilled and delighted when, this afternoon as I sat dunking a kit-kat into a mug of tea, Julie e-mailed me with a sketch she'd just finished today. Being a gardener Julie is not working at the moment, so practising her art which she hadn't done much of for years. The photo I believe doesn't do it justice as it was taken on her mobile phone and I had to photoshop it, but I love it. I love all wildlife drawings which are what I call half finished. Just the two birds and some twigs in this case, it really doesn't need anything else. As a teenager I fell in love with a Danish painter called Mads Stage who produced fabulous scratchy evocative drawings, Julie's style is quite similar. Lovely

Well that's enough of this winter wildlife, it's time to head home into the Bristol traffic and then have a nice cup of tea.

The warm South West

The weather forecast said last night we'd not have any fresh snow here; the band of snow, sleet and rain would be well east of Somerset. Well the little fibbers!

I awoke this morning to more snow. And news that the M5 was closed between Junction 15 and 30. At 7.30 a blizzard kicked off, absolute whiteout out here at 8am, and so old Quicksilver has another enforced day at home. Logged onto work, and most of my colleagues aren't in work either, Whiteladies Road outside the BBC has been closed by the police because cars are sliding backwards down a hill, and well it seems like complete madness. So I'm staying put.

Sitting in this chair...... can you believe how chaotic this office has become. Paintings, bits of paper, books piled everywhere. So today I may don my pinny and marigolds and sort out the mess in here. And yes the eagle eyed ones of you will notice that's a stuffed Sparrowhawk on the book case. Flew into a glass porch in 1990 in Seaham, County Durham. It was then brought to me wrapped in newspaper to see if there was anything I could do with it. I pointed out it was dead, I feel a rendition of the dead parrot sketch coming on.... she'd ceased to be, fallen off this mortal coil, she's flipping snuffed it.........so had it stuffed.

And I will leave you with a video of the snow falling in the back garden at 8.30am, complete with House Sparrow calls. Must put some food out. Keep safe, keep warm and go and play in the snow.

Postscript - Just taken this photo at 4pm outside. The rejuvenation and optimism of nature. May be snowy, it may be cold, but the crocus's are still coming through.

Neige.... the day after the night before

Well it is the morning after the night before, and boy it didn't half throw it down last night. In the back garden it was 3.5 inches, which isn't a lot really, but for someone living near the sea, and only 10 feet above sea level, that's a lot. Usually we only get a few whiffs and waffles, then it melts. So up with the lark, I headed out before dawn to capture the beauty of it all before it all melted. And sadly, although the roads were okayish, I couldn't get out onto the M5 this morning for the grid locked traffic, so after 2 failed attempts to get into work, booked an enforced annual leave day. So that's why you get the following photo blog in the morning. I should be at work.

I'll let the photos do the talking !!

The opening photo is of the estate I live in and taken coming back after my walk, just liked it that's all. This is one of the farms near where I live.

Road down to Ebdon Bow farm and the River Banwell

The River Banwell... get Little Grebe, Kingfishers and Grey Heron here.

Ebdon Bow farm

Wick st Lawrence's very own post box

Arty shot of old apple trees and Ebdon Bow farm

Just because I like trees......

I was even up before farmer Meade

Snowy landscape towards the old village of Wick st Lawrence

.... and of course when trees die, they still have uses. Especially in this weather.

Far too arty a shot to be in a wildlife blog !

Sun was coming up now on the way home.

More pretentious arty stuff... above and below, I nearly used the bottom one as the opening photo on "my post".... get it, post, blog post, no, oh well never mind !

And yes this is a wildlife blog, so back in the garden an very active Blackcap was feeding on the Witch Hazel, and as I walked into the house, these Canada Geese shot over the roof. Just managed to get a shot before they were off.

A perfect end to an absolutely fabulous morning in the snow... me, a big kid, yep you got it !!