The sudden change in temperature turns the world to ice

Well how was it for you?  Did your world freeze overnight?  Did you get any of the white stuff?

The anticipation was immense. The expectation huge.

What am I talking about – thundersnow of course!

All they could talk about on the radio for two days this week was the thundersnow.

Apparently, the thunder clouds rumble and rather than providing the rain and lightning that they normally do, they provide snow in large quantities and massive flashes in the sky. How exciting!

It was supposed to be a bit like a scene from “The Day After Tomorrow” without the instant deaths from freezing.  At one stage we heard a report that said we would have temperatures of -13 so it was supposed to get pretty cold.

But I haven’t seen any reports of thundersnow actually being seen, (unless I missed it). I hope someone saw it and has the pictures to prove it. If you did, please leave a comment and describe it for us. I may be a bit early and it could be happening as I write this or you read it.

However I did learn a new word, Graupel.  This is the winter precipitation you have never heard of. Graupel are small pellets of ice which occur when water freezes around a snow flake to form snow pellets or soft hail.

All of this has been caused by the winds blowing in from the arctic. The weather forecast has declared mild weather temperatures but then quickly followed up with the dreaded wind-chill temperature which normally has been on or below zero. Not a week to be a lollipop person!

So the doom mongers have been predicting chaos and the news reporters have been desperately trying to find someone in trouble to report on. Sometimes the phrase “ambulance chasers” seems to apply to the television camera crew trying to find a person in trouble rather than the legal profession.

(This reminds me of a film I would recommend called “Nightcrawler” which has nothing to do with snow, and everything to do with ambulance chasing).

You would have thought we had never had snow before, such was the clamour to experience it. For some very young amongst us it was probably somewhat of an anti-climax with a merest dusting. I saw the most ethnically-diverse of snow men that a family had produced with a white, brown and yellow body, as there wasn’t enough snow to make the whole body so other materials appeared to be drafted in.

But the family got their snowman experience so everyone was happy!

The monochrome colour palette

The colour for the garden palette has definitely been monochrome. The overhanging cloud last weekend meant that the sun struggled to make inroads and the overwhelming feeling was one of gloom with the promise of the cold wind to come.

The drizzle really got into all the nooks and crannies such that the damp lingered in the air. So much so that I was even encouraged to clean the inside of our wardrobes as it was horrible outside, an event similar to finding hens teeth.

As one peers out over the seemingly lengthening grass and into the mist there has been a surprisingly wide variety of birds. The bird feeders encourage them to come into the garden, but they seem to linger much longer than normal in this weather, to take advantage of the plentiful supply of something they can actually find.

The smaller birds were joined by the two large male pheasants that do not even try to pretend they are visiting any more. The cats have grown so used to the pheasants it’s as if they are invisible to them.

But the cats can definitely see the smaller birds and spent a good amount of the week camped under the feeders waiting for a distracted bird to fly down and walk into their mouth. Tom and Jerry eat your heart out!

The strangest sight was one of our cats got so bored that they decided it would be more fun to continuously jump up and try to catch a bird in flight with their paws, bouncing up and down as if on a pogo stick. (Do they still make pogo sticks, my record was over 500 without stopping?)

Needless to say the cats didn’t catch anything, but they did get some exercise.

The hills are alive with the sounds of tunnelling

The moles were busy destroying the lawn when I wrote last week’s blog.

Thankfully they have only created a couple of small additions but then seemed to have stopped. Keen to understand what they are doing and whether they are likely to continue I read a little about them. Once again with almost everything in the garden there is more to a mole than meets the eye. Their cute little image belies a tendency to imitate Hannibal Lector. 

• A mole’s diet mainly consists of earthworms, but they also feed on beetles and other insects, even baby mice and occasionally shrews.

• A mole needs to eat the equivalent of its own bodyweight each day. In autumn they make a store of hundreds of earthworms to last them through the winter. The worms are usually chewed off at the front end so they cannot crawl away, but remain alive and so provide fresh food for several months.

• Moles breed between March and May. The gestation period is 30 days and 1-2 litters are born a year. Outside the mating season, moles lead solitary lives, each one in its own system of tunnels.

• Moles are not blind, as most people believe. They do have eyes and internal ears, but these are very small to prevent them being clogged up and damaged during tunnelling. Although they can see, the mole’s eyesight is poor, with no ability to detect colours, just light from dark and movement. However, the mole has a special weapon to help it find other animals underground - an area of bare pink skin on the snout covered in tiny pimples that detect movement and the scents of prey and other moles.

• There are estimated to be 35-40 million moles in the UK

• A mole is the only mammal to live solely underground and they achieve this because they have a greater proportion of red blood cells than other mammals. This helps them to live in an environment where oxygen levels are low, typically 7%

• Moles are phenomenal diggers and can shift 540 times their own body weight of earth per day, tunnelling up to 200 meters per day

• Large molehills mark the position of a nest; a line of small molehills marks the direction of a deep tunnel; a continuous line of earth marks a very shallow tunnel. – (We have a line of small hills on the lawn with a few large ones dotted around them. A deep tunnel leading to a nest??)

Whatever it is that they have built, it is now all quiet on the western front. Maybe the trench warfare has moved on or maybe they came up to watch the thundersnow show!

Our muppets as they were originally

As I came around from a deep sleep on Tuesday I became aware that the cats were climbing the walls in my bedroom and using the various bits of furniture to jump off.

When we moved into the house we immediately purchased the two little monsters and it wasn’t long before they were climbing the curtains and causing mayhem. In fact, we purchased some new curtains for one of the bedrooms that they immediately took a shine to and practised their tree climbing to the extent that the curtains were covered with holes within days. We have never replaced them, although the cats’ curtain climbing days have mostly passed.

This time it was something much less sinister. They had brought me a present – in the form of a mouse which was very much alive. I hate mice or anything that moves that quickly. Being big and clumsy doesn’t go with mice. No sooner had I stood up than they all rushed off down the hall. Thankfully I was able to open the back door and it escaped. Crisis over once more! 

Something to look forward to

It’s the time of year when most people consider their holiday options. We have just booked ours so we have something to look forward to. A week in the Scilly Isles in spring should hopefully provide a reasonable amount of wildlife to observe, and maybe even a picture or two for the blog.

There are less pictures in the blog this week as I have not been home much to take any. To continue on the holiday theme I have included a few pictures from some of ours. See if you can guess where they are. Guess the country and the region / place. I suspect google images will not identify them for you! 

Have a good weekend!