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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!

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