Praise Be! The road is drivable.

Um. Pardon me. For reasons I don’t really understand, I read The Guardian especially when y’all are having freakish weather. This is strange because I live across the pond in West Virginia. I’ve only been to the U.K. once and while I fell wildly in love with London, I don’t have any ties to your fair isles.

However, to-wit, and tut tut, I’m fascinated watching y’all carrying on in and carrying on about the snow. This episode has been extra fun because we too are having an early taste of winter. I’m sitting here gazing out the door looking at our first “significant” snow fall of the season – about 3″ maybe 4″ of the fluffy stuff (8-10 cm). It’s about 22 F (-5 or so C) which is cold, but not freakish.

I haven't even gotten fall's leaves raked yet.

Around here, that’s enough snow to have the school kids hoping school will be cancelled for tomorrow. Actually an inch is enough to have them hoping.

In these parts, we do what I call the “Appalachian Snow Panic” – dubbed such because “here” is located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It’s an odd little tradition, but at the forecast of anything more than a dusting, folks gather up the kids, grampa and Great Aunt Gertrude to go to the grocery store. It’s kind of required. They usually wait until the snow is actually falling to do the mad scramble for provisions. This adds not only drama, but the likelihood that snow crazed folks will play bumper cars on the roads.

Anyway. By 6:00 last night there wasn’t a gallon of milk or loaf of bread to be found. Even people with glutin and lactose intolerances join in the snow frenzy of procuring bread and milk. It’s evidently a beloved tradition that we will engage in time and time again between now and March.

Cold and sunny. Snow squalls expected later.

My question, yes I do have one, is, ahem, exactly how much snow did London get? I really can’t make heads or tails of it.

And, for the record, tell those folks whining about how Switzerland and other Nordic climes fare so much better to quiet down and take their hypocritical selves out to a pub or something. Snow removal, melting salt, and “grit” cost a heap of money. Y’all just need to munch on some toast, turn the milk into brandy-laced hot chocolate and cruise online newspapers in some other country. It’s a big bunch of fun.

Toodles, Connie

P.S.  Can anyone explain to my Inner Anglophile how it is that I’ve believed, until last year’s Trafalgar Square snowball fight, that London routinely got buried in snow?