If I had believed the gospel of the weather forecasters over the last week, I would be currently wearing about 10 layers of clothes, stockpiling food, checking the butane and the torch batteries incase of power cuts and only leaving the house if completely necessary.

Yes we were promised “cold” weather and everyone seems to have been talking about it like it’s the next ice age. But no, I have seen no sight of woolly mammoths striding down the road or sabre-toothed tigers attacking the neighbours cat. My outdoor thermometer (yes, i know!) tells me it’s 2.9c outside my window.

That is not particularly cold.

Ok maybe we will get some snow down here tomorrow but nothing like they have made it out to be like. One positive is we won’t have the fiasco of last year when they somehow forgot it may be cold and icy in January and didn’t grit the roads!

Update (29/1/04) : Ok ok. It snowed here last night for about an hour which appears to have caused chaos! We also got lightning, the times said “Much of the South East experienced the snow and, in places, thunder, lightning and hail were spotted together – the first time the combination has been seen since 1973.” Was pretty impressive. Anyway the thermometer dropped to -2.9 at midnight last night so it was cold. The worst thing is the icy snow which meant I had to walk to work rather than cycling. Still not that “cold” though…