Colder than a witches tits here... it's -3

... this is Essex, that's positively arctic.

I am currently wearing.... thermal tights and thick lounge trousers (next) and a long tee shirt, polo neck, sweatshirt and oodie.  I am quite toasty.

FYI, the fire will be lit at lunch :)

Weather update please peeps... we seem to not be showing snow anymore :(

It was -3 just on my way to the gym at 6pm last night so god knows what it got down to overnight.  Pond is frozen and even in the sun the frost shows no signs of going.

Doggers my undefloor is turned on all year round and I just adjust the parameters so that it doesn't come on during the summer.  However, the advantage on a day like this is that I've got a living room with a section of full height glass wall then a further area including french windows and glazed panels either side of the doors.  The initial morning blast of heating has put the living room up to 22C and now the sun will take it up from there.

I've also got walls that are built of two layers of wood board then four inches of sheeps wool then another couple of inches of tongue and groove wood fibre board panels and then traditional weather boarding so once the place is warm the temperature doesn't fluctuate much.

we have underfloor in the orangery but not (yet) in the rest of the open plan kitchen/dining/living space

so there’s one bit that’s toasty underfoot

I stand there for warm toed kicks 

Check out the weather in Chicago and other parts of northern USA this week (and even the long term winter averages there )

 

Makes you realize how ridiculously mild our winters are for how far north we are , and how in the grand scheme of things this cold snap is pretty tame /could be a lot worse if the full forces of winter at this latitude were to be unleashed upon us without being surrounded by so many modifying influences even in the colder setups like now 

 

The trouble of course is that we are useless at dealing with it, whether it's not being able to deal with snow when it does arrive , or not knowing what to do with the boiler to stop the pipes bursting (this happened to my neighbour last year so was mulling over this last night )

Check out the weather in large parts of Russia and lol your brains out. Putin's folly has left large swathes of his population living in igloos as their water pipes burst and the floodwater turns to ice in their houses. They thought Europe would freeze without their gas... Oops how the turn tables. 

I'd feel bad for them, but they have a choice. Even if it's not an easy one. 

Makes you realize how ridiculously mild our winters are for how far north we are

Haven't some raised the concern that climate change may warm the oceans in a way that fvkcs up the current that has caused this anomaly, and that we would be properly arctic in the winters then? I don't recall what the expected timing is and whether this is an extreme worst-case scenario.

The Yanks at one point considered blowing up Cape Hatteras, to direct the Gulf Stream along their Eastern Seaboard, leaving us to freeze while gIving Long Island a much balmier climate.