Winter (wonder) Land

Last Friday was spent being extremely distracted by the falling snow.

While I’ve seen snow before, before Friday I’d never had the chance to see it falling from the sky – beyond the scanty specks that drifted down before melting on the ground on a few occasions in Kansai.

 

Sitting by the window when it’s snowing is very distracting. I kept staring out, mesmerised by the snowflakes and trying to capture the falling snow. The snow wasn’t heavy enough in the morning to be caught properly on camera though, and it wasn’t till the afternoon when the snow got heavier that I managed to get some shots.

 

Most of the snow had accumulated during the night – it wasn’t that thick in our backyard, and as can be seen, it was the icy type of snow, instead of the fluffy kind you see on tv. In other words – it wasn’t nice snow, especially if you have to walk through it.

The howling gusts of wind were quite fascinating too, and I was very happy to be indoors:

The snow got a lot worse as the day progressed. In the late afternoon the lights started flickering every now and then, and during the rush hour the radio stations were down. Sometime between 7 and 8pm, we experienced a blackout, realised that we had no torch lights, had tea lights but no lighter or matches, and had no heat.

So what did we do? We headed to the large 24hr Tesco near us to get supplies – or to camp there for heat if necessary. There was actually a blizzard – as the snow was being billowed around rather than coming down to the ground – and it was quite a sight with the thick snow piled up on the pavements.

While we were driving very slowly due to the slippery and icy roads, for some reason there were cars zooming past us – I don’t understand how people can have such disregard for their safety and their lives. There were also people who were trying to avoid the snow on the pavements by walking on the road instead – utter idiots. This guy was quite far out on the road as he was also avoiding the puddles that were next to the pavements, and it took a while for us to spot him as the roads were quite dark.

A part of the road had also flooded and a car had gotten stuck in the water. It brought to mind my first visit to Belfast in winter 2010, and I went into full crisis mode – the moment we got home, I filled up a bucket in the bathroom and all available drink receptacles with potable water just in case there was a repeat of that winter where we had no water for 4 days (it could have been longer but we’d buggered off to Dublin by then).

As life would have it, once we’d prepared for the worst, the worst did not happen. After the very orange night sky (above), a fair bit of snow had melted by the next morning and it hardly snowed where we were the following day. There’s still some snow on the ground now but no fresh snow – and the brown snow that we saw on the main road outside Central Station yesterday was testament to how pollutive vehicles are.

There you have it – my somewhat anti-climatic but fascinating weekend. I know it’s not at all a lot of snow compared to what those outside Belfast had (as they’re higher up in the mountains) or what’s common in many other countries, but give this tropical girl a break!