Hard Facts Community

Gary Gritter

This was Horfield Common yesterday - STPD went for a walk.




Less impressively, the view from my bedroom window today - you can just see a light sprinkling on Cleeve Hill, back left.


(We should get Tom to post some pics of Kremsmaur - a bit more impressive

No snow here. Boo. Last night I was at an athletics competition in Grangemouth and I walked out to find it was snowing.

This is Kremsmaur, near Tom's home village in Austria.




Magnificent yes?

The red circle is around a field which has a lovely legend attached. Tom would tell it better, but here's my attempt: The field is usually the last to lose its snow, and then looks a little like a white hound leaping over green grass. So Tom's Opa told a little Tom,
Wenn der Hund springt, ist der Frühling auf dem Weg (when the Hound leaps, Spring is on its way.)

There's always a stubborn bit of snow that doesn't melt isn't there.

It has snowed overnight as weather predicted for once. This is a local park which has more trees cut down every time I walk round it. In the distance is an old decayed tree so it doesn't seem park policy to cut trees down. Another tree was struck in half by lightning and they just removed the dangerous bits that might fall on people. So I don't know who is cutting trees down. It's not waste land forest place it's a park with swings and bowling. Trees can be diseased but so many all at once dotted around the park it's very odd.

Do you think people are sneaking out in dead of night in these straitened times and cutting them down for firewood??

It's my guess it's disease such as ash dieback. Seemingly healthy trees may need to be cut down to stop it spreading once it catches hold.

Does ash dieback affect cherry blossom trees. I haven't an inventory of the park but at least 4 of the trees i know were cherry blossoms.

Hope it isn't firewood otherwise we won't have any trees left soon will we. It does fit with the symptoms more though because if it was a planned cull for ash dieback or whatever wouldn't they just identify the condemned trees and do them all. But it seems every week there's another one of two gone.

Most of snow has gone here now because it was sunny this afternoon.

No, cherry isn't affected, just ash. It shows with leaf browning in the summer. It could be worth a note to your local council to make sure it isn't theft.

How would that help. Even if you ring the police mid crime they won't come out and do anybody. After a crime has been committed already it's just paperwork and it won't get the trees back.

Everyone else is getting the mobile phone warning soon I must have been a trial of a trial. Almost wish I was at work because we were banned from mobile phones they had to be off but people kept them on silent in drawers so they could keep checking them. The alerts go off even if phone is on silent so that would be fun. It has to be done because the nuclear warning from the 70s won't work because they used it's frequency or something.

Snow seems to have gone. It has snowed in April before so we might see some more then.

The local authority might not know it's going on, although I take your point that they won't do anything about it apart from maybe alerting local people. Even that is better than nothing.

The alerts are on 23rd April. So we have to hope there's not a real snow energency that day because people who saw the news will think it's just a test and not leave their homes. I am not sure where we are supposed to go though it would be helpful to have information about if there's too much snow head for the nearest city centre/coastline/cave/bomb shelter.

head for the nearest city centre/coastline/cave/bomb shelter.

pub?

A spaceship has set off for Jupiter.

I watched the launch. It's supposed to be an ESA joint effort but the launch director spoke in French so we know who's really running it.
The last British launch crashed.

You may well be correct, Eccs, as to who is actually running this project, seeing that the French-made rocket carrying a French-made space vehicle was launched from the French launching site in Kourou, French Guiana.

So far as the ESA is concerned, 67% of its 2023 budget consists of direct member contributions; 25% of that comes from France with another 21% from Germany. Most of the other 33% is a contribution from the EU.

However, the working language within the ESA is English.

All this info comes from Wikipedia.

We are forecast a white christmas in UK. But our forecasters as the ones who said deffo isnt a hurricane coming just before the hurricane that knocked ancient trees down so what do they know. It has gone very cold though I can notice that and have got my big coat and thermal gloves out for the cold so if it snows I am ready.

It was frosty here on Friday night but not last night. It has got colder as the month has progressed and I have had the heating on longer each day as I refuse to be cold when I can afford not to be. It doesn't matter for Them because of their nice warm coats - they aren't called Maine Coons for nothing!

Parts of the UK have a yellow warning for snow on Thursday. One should avoid yellow snow.