The Great British Weather

No snow down in Surrey today. Just rain and dropped to 2 degrees (from 10 yesterday). Lad went into school today wearing shirt jumper, fleece, down coat and rain jacket (all his choice).

That was a miserable commute this morning.

Yep, heated gloves charging for school pick up time. Arthritis was not happy on the drop off ride.

and its just started snowing and raining at the same time

nice weather for ducks penguins

Got my layers right, and my Galbier leather gloves kept the fingers warm. Bit of hail in Parsons Green was as white as it got in SW London though.

Biggest issue is not a single radiator on at the office so really hoping my kit finds a way to get a bit dry before home time.

Fucking weather, it's mid November for fucks sake!

Christ on a bike. 1 degree on the morning commute tomorrow. Will have to dig out the ‘proper gear’.

Gonna be nitrile gloves on top of winter gloves again. The thawing pain last year nearly brought me to tears each morning but adding that wind proof layer on top definitely helps. And arm warmers.

PPE goggles from tomorrow for me.

-1 here this morning.

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The tiniest bit of snow here in Teignmouth, not even settling and which has now stopped, but the schools have just shut, frantic call from family member can I go and pick the kids up, as she is at work.

Ridiculous

Blustery near Cambridge. We will rebuild.

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Time to build back better.

I hope no one’s affected by flooding. Storm Bert was a whopper.

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Had to drive from Gloucester to Berkshire yesterday. Was intense.

I happen to live in Pontypridd, albeit on the side of a large hill, which you've probably seen was hit hard yesterday. Whatever measures were put in place after the 2020 floods seem to have helped a bit, but we're still looking at hundreds of homes ruined.

The anger towards the local and national government is rife down here now - our local MP had the wise idea to share a Go Fund Me page to help raise funds for affected residents but like... isn't that what tax is for?

If this was happening every four years in London or the southeast there'd be outrage.

If anyone wants a good read about how Wales has been consistently starved of funding by central government, this is unfun but important: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/15/great-welsh-train-robbery-hs2-rail-services

Anyway, gonna head down the hill later to see if there's anything needing doing with the clean up - spent the morning yesterday bailing sewage water out of the local museum building so also on the lookout for any fun gastro symptoms. Can you tell I'm angry?

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Disruption at Euston:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/euston-station-storm-bert-overcrowding-power-cut-trains-disrupted-b1195960.html

Some scaffolding nearly collapsed in Bethnal Green Road:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/storm-bert-met-office-london-flights-heathrow-city-gatwick-flooding-wales-b1195896.html

Various other kinds of disruption like cancelled flights, Hyde Park closed (surely this must have affected all Royal Parks?) but overall London seems to have had a lucky escape this time.

Awful stuff around the rest of the country, though.

I spent Friday and Saturday nights in a fancy treehouse in Sussex, I didn't sleep very well...

Yes, it's been a failure of decades. Obviously not just Wales, but flood defences in northern river valleys, stopping run-off from high moors, undoing river straightening, coastal defences ... it's a long list.

The infrastructure can help with events like this, and it would absolutely be nice to be better-protected against this kind of storm, but I can never help thinking about the real danger from events like in the Ahr and Erft Valleys in 2021 or south-eastern Spain, not to mention China, Brazil, and everywhere else extreme events have happened in the last few years. Even Dubai had a freak rainstorm not so long ago. When that kind of rain comes down, you can forget any infrastructure completely, it's merely a sticking-plaster when much more meaningful action is required, which is an even greater failure of global politics.

But yeah, let's not do anything much, flooding mainly affects others, poorer others, I'm alright, Jack, etc.

Great timing to go glamping.

It was thankfully pretty sturdy, just a few shimmies in the big gusts

Biggest issue is not a single radiator on at the office

Bit late, but I used to put my stuff on the servers and WiFi router.

Idk what I'd do now.

Absolutely - by global standards Wales is outrageously privileged.

What happened here yesterday is just a symptom of the fuck-you trickle down of our established climate denialism, just like we saw at COP 29 just now with the wealthiest nations bullying the global south into accepting a reparations settlement that condemns them to disaster at the hands of others, basically.

So yeah - nothing here is on the scale of suffering we’re seeing elsewhere (yet) but it’s all part of the same problem of those in charge willing to sacrifice the lives and homes and livelihoods of the worse off to avoid having to do anything expensive or hard that would mean them having to change their own ways. So nothing new under the sun.

Okay I’m sad now - off to watch videos of dogs being reunited with their owners cos that’s the opposite of being sad.

Idk what I'd do now.

I used to have a spare set of cycle stuff in the office. The stuff that I rode in wearing and hadn't dried in time would then become the emergency set. Just takes a bit of organisation.

Also had a spare set of work clothes in my work locker in case I ever forgot to bring anything in with me. In ~15 years of working in that office the number of times I needed either was very low, but it was definitely non-zero.