The Fall & the Start of Winter

Since I have been back I am having to adjust to several things again. The first is the weather. I am still adjusting to Fahrenheit and when I see forecasts that state it s going to be 32 it sometimes takes a while to realize that this is freezing point. I found that the cold weather in England (where they use Celsius) was an interesting interlude, but now I am facing the prospect of my first Northern Hemisphere winter in more than 20 years. I have visited the UK during that time but have not endured the entire winter period since 1986! On my last trip I recall driving back to where I was staying and watching the temperature fall from 5 degrees to 1 degree Celsius over the course of the 20 minute journey. I must admit, that felt cold.

I had also forgotten the winter days when it is drizzling (fine rain that you almost can’t see) and the fog that tends to be associated with it. This is the type of rain where you can get extremely wet without realizing it until it is too late. Not being able to see the horizon due to the mist and fog brought back childhood memories as you don’t tend to get rain and fog together very often in Aus but I encountered this type of weather in the UK and here since my return.

I had also forgotten the nights when it gets dark very early and it is cold, as in very cold. Yes it gets dark early in Aus when they change the clocks, but it feels very different when it is dark, wet and cold and the roads are slippy (not that many drivers seem to be aware of it).

I had also forgotten what happens in the autumn, or rather ‘The Fall’ as they call it here with good reason. I can remember leaves on the roads and clogging drains in England. I can also recall waiting for a train one morning on a cold autumn day when the announcer informed us passengers that the train was delayed due to “leaves on the line”. We thought this was a rather silly reason until it was explained to us. In the UK the electric rail is on the ground and when there are a lot of leaves, it prevents contact between the live rail and the trains, meaning the trains get delayed!

However, here falling leaves are altogether another story. You have to clear leaves from your front yard and the road as it becomes extremely dangerous due to the incredible volume of leaves. I have seen piles of leaves outside houses almost as big as cars. Imagine long lines of very large mounds of leaves three or four feet high and you start to get some idea.

It seems the local councils (usually) come along quite regularly and suck them up into a special truck. I helped my daughter and son in law sweep up leaves from my son in laws parents place. We worked for something like 4 hours to fill lots of very large bags of leaves (and I mean LARGE and very heavy bags). I was using the petrol (sorry gas) driven leaf sucking machine that also mulched the leaves up and crammed them into the huge bag. Despite its size I still had to empty this many times. I might add, theirs is not what you would call a big property and the yard is not particularly large, just has lots of trees and as a result a massive number of leaves. My son and daughter will dig them into the ground as a form of fertilizer, but sadly the ground has frozen and so we can’t at this stage.

Then I experienced something I have not faced in a very long time, snow. I have always remembered a conversation when I first got to Aus. Some of my colleagues were talking about going to the snow and one asked me if I was intending to go to the snow as well. I was more than a little puzzled as I explained where I came from, the snow came to you! Well I am back to that again.

I realized it was snowing one day when I saw very small flakes swirling around but not settling. The next few days were the same, very cold but the snow seemed to melt as soon as it touched the ground. Just to cheer me up, my daughter reminded me that this is only the beginning.

Quite suddenly one evening, the snow decided to stay. Fortunately thus far it has not settled on the roads, but the countryside is a picturesque image of white leafless trees and fields. Once again, childhood memories were invoked as it seemed less cold (as opposed to warmer) when the snow settled. At the moment, the temperatures are hovering a few degrees around freezing during the day (sometimes above, sometimes below) but during the night they go down to five or six degrees below freezing.

The other thing I will have to adapt to is that the UK is a relatively small island and so does not tend to get extreme weather. Here, I am many hundreds of miles from the coast on a very large land mass and the weather is much more extreme. I have experienced four or five feet snow drifts when I lived in a place that was the highest point in Kent, but such things are not uncommon here it seems.

My daughter has told me that the ice storms are really interesting. That’s when you have to start using the ice shovels to clear paths and drives and the snow ploughs get busy. Oh, I can’t wait for that…..