Winter 2008-9
part 1 - The Dyfi Estuary freezes!
BACK
TO WEATHER-BLOG MENU
New!
Fine Art Prints & digital images for sale-
Welsh Weather
& Dyfi Valley landscapes Slide-Library - Click HERE
Not often
this blog gets updated at the same times as the weather-events that
inspire it, but this exceptionally cold spell has justified special
attention! Page added 7th Jan 2009.
This
has been the sharpest, deepest cold since late 1995. The very cold
weather set in just before the New Year and has lasted for the first
week of January.
Some
people have, rather triumphantly, declared this "the end of global
warming". Bad move. This is weather - not climate. In 2006, there
was a very hot and dry summer, and I hope I am right in not blaming
that on global warming. You simply cannot blame individual events,
lasting from minutes (a tornado) to weeks (a drought) on climate - it
is the long-term multidecadal trends that we need to monitor if we are
to talk of climate, and this cold spell will, when it ends, have lasted
approximately a fortnight, and will have been a lot less severe than
many in the 70s and 80s, and one in the 90s. So, ditching the politics
and on to more interesting stuff:
Dry
for the most part, the nearest we have had to a
snowfall was a period on the morning of the 4th in which there was a
slight but steady fall of snow-grains (below). These covered all
surfaces to a slight depth - just enough to make pavements lethally
slippery!
Any
water progressively solidified - I tipped this out of a plastic tub and
the patterns made by the air-bubbles trapped as the water froze made an
unusual photographic subject!
....as
did these ice-crystals on my windscreen! These were not thick
hoar-frosts - there was no freezing fog and indeed very little
moisture. By the night of the 5th-6th, minima of -10 were occurring
hereabouts.....
...suggesting some ice-climbing might be had. I headed to a disused
quarry that used to be quite good in this respect but this was about
all the ice that I could find!
Very
pretty but pretty useless in climbing terms! The "mushrooms" (below)
were at the base of a small waterfall (that I expected to be frozen
solid but was still running well); they were where splashes had built
up over frozen vegetation....
Now,
onto the Estuary! On the afternoon of the 6th I headed down towards the
coast with cameras but quickly nipped into a parking-spot when I
spotted what was going on at Glandyfi. The tide was coming in and these
ice-floes were drifting up towards the railway-bridge at Glandyfi
Junction, a sight I hadn't seen since December 1995!
Duck-patrol
investigates!
Looking
downstream, the Estuary was clearly frozen right across...
By the
time I had finished taking photos there, sunset had passed, so I
decided to head down to Aberdyfi the following morning (i.e. today),
and work my way inland. It was still, mostly overcast and less cold
with overnight minima at a balmy -4!
This is at Picnic Island at Aberdyfi - just east of the town, with
floe-ice slabs dotted along the shoreline. Too close to the open sea on
this occasion! I moved inland to Frongoch, where there was a lot
more.....
The
view back towards Aberdyfi....
....and the view upstream.
Near
Gogarth farm, the Estuary swings away from the road as it heads towards
Glandyfi. Here there was a lot more ice-cover....
...with floe-ice lying about atop ice that
had formed in-place. This piece was about 5 metres long.
The view across the Estuary here was like something from sub-polar
regions!
An unusual sight indeed!
Sea-water typically
freezes at about -1.8C; with sea-temperatures in the Irish Sea
currently at about 9-10C, coastal regions, with any wind off the sea,
will not be so cold as inland areas, because low-level air passing over
the sea will be warmed by it. In the past 3 days, however, there has
been virtually no wind at all, eliminating this effect. The very low
temperatures thus managed to cool the water in the Estuary, helped by
the fact that it was also diluted and cooled to a degree by fresh water
coming down the Dyfi, with the end result being these unusual and
spectacular conditions.
The cold conditions are set to last just a few more days, with somewhat
milder weather moving in from the Atlantic by the 12th. But it has been
an intensely cold start to the year, compared to recent years!
|
BACK TO WEATHER-BLOG MENU
New!
Fine Art Prints & digital images for sale-
Welsh Weather & Dyfi Valley landscapes Slide-Library - Click HERE |
|
|