05 February 2012

From the Scriptorium: Snow in Britain but not Wisconsin

From the Scriptorium: Snow in Britain but not Wisconsin: I'm always fascinated when I see photographs of home, especially those which feature animals or flowers. This one makes the sheep look down...

Snow in Britain but not Wisconsin

I'm always fascinated when I see photographs of home, especially those which feature animals or flowers.  This one makes the sheep look downright frozen in place!

Here in Wisconsin, we would normally have several feet of snow on the ground right now, but the goofy weather patterns have our snow melting instead of falling.  What was a lovely winter scene is now reduced to brown grass and gritty, dirty frozen slush.  Our local ski festival had to cancel all but the last day of competition due to poor snow conditions.

Over in West Yorkshire, this photo shows a typical winter scene.  Not that much snow (in my humble opinion) but starkly beautiful none-the-less.  But just a few inches of snow snarls up traffic, shuts roads and creates a lot of ice.  Britain, after all, is an island and subject to the sea effects.  You'd think all the salt in the water would keep the ice off the roads, but NO!!

This is an incredible photo.  You can certainly see the power of Mother Nature in this frozen waterfall.  We have pictures like this here in the States, but I found this quite powerful.



In 2010, this was the scene from our back door.  It was a rollickin' good winter with lots of snow and plenty of icicles.  This one was especially fun to watch grow but Mick finally had to take it down because it was actually very dangerous. 
Climatologists tell us that as we progress through this decade, our weather here in Wisconsin will slowly turn into the same weather patterns as Southern Missouri.  I hate to think how hot it will be there! Summers can hit over 100 degrees here already, so I suppose we need to see to our air conditioner maintenance!!

This is an aerial view of St. Mary's Church in Horsham, UK.  My guess is those are people down below and not headstones.  Are they sliding down to the church hall for tea and biscuits after services?  Certainly looks cold there, doesn't it?

I'll end my wintry tale with a photograph of a bridge in York.  Lovely, isn't it?  Reminiscent of Central Park in New York City.  Perhaps all park bridges look like this in winter, perhaps not.  It only serves to remind me that no matter where you go in this world, there is always something beautiful about it.

Thanks to the BBC News for these photos.  Most are pictures taken by local folks who have captured some great scenes.  I only wish I could have been one of them!!  Good on ya, folks!!