English winter

As I mentioned in my last post, we are now in England and taking in the full blow of the English winter. Though, technically, this is not our first winter as we reached here early this year and got a fleeting taste of the winter as it was coming to an end. However this time arround we are facing it in its full form. Strangely enough, last season had the coldest winter in the past seven years and this seems to be the earliest and severest in the past few! We already saw the earliest widespread snowfall in the last twenty-three years and a days snow took two weeks and a rain-shower to clear out. What a way to welcome December! The snow cover was about 8-9 inches deep in just about 2 hours. I know it snows much heavily in some other parts of the world, however for someone who had never seen snow in his life before this year, it was a thrilling experience. So what if it was difficult to walk around when the snow on the ground started getting hard and people kept slipping and falling. Though it has not snowed again since the first week of December, we noticed another funny thing recently. All the puddles on the roads have turned into ice! True, with the temperatures going sub zero for the first time after the snow lifted, it is a logically expected phenomenon. It is only that this is the first time for me to see water freeze outside a refrigerator. Well that is except river Orwell back in Ipswich which melted before our eyes last season. So let us see if the Aire freezes this time around . .