Sick of the incessant snow updates

He might win this year with that pic.

Here is boringly cold. Apart from the 30kt winds and snow overnight that left me digging out my van from the carport so I could get to the shops. Up north is colder, last I heard was about about -20-25c in places

continues to be some of the weirdest snow/ice conditions I can ever remember.

The extreme cold of last night (-16C), coming after the big snow a couple of days earlier has resulted in a real mix of conditions. I was descending of Meall a’ Bhuachaille today and the snow looked more like fur. On closer inspection, the top layer was made up of vertical crystals, so it had a very “3D” effect.

And one of Ryvoan, just because…

The hoar frost is mental at the moment. We have a chicken wire fence and the hoar is so big it’s more or less filled in the holes. Shining a light across the fields is millions of little sparkles.

This afternoon we had 8 blackbirds feeding on the food I put out all at once. Only regularly see one. Couldn’t count the other birds but I’d guess at over 100. Gold finch, greenfinch, chaffinch, 3 types of tit, siskin, robins, dunnock, bullfinch, crows. They are all puffed up almost double. God knows how they manage. There was a tit sheltering in our porch, it had its head tucked under its wing to keep warm.

Our track is basically a piste now

The tracks up on the tops are still under a foot of snow.

I was watching the birds in the garden at sunrise yesterday and saw a barn owl do a full turn of the garden with half a dozen magpies harrying it. Presumably it was still out huntingg as there’s such a scarcity of prey.

The thaw is on in Fort William.

Bit late to the defrosting cars topic but I just put a towel on the windscreen the night before. It completely stops any frost, I can just remove the towel get in and drive away. I don’t get how it’s not been a viral “life hack” that everyone has adopted by now

Yeah I used to put an old bed sheet over my car when I first learnt to drive. Tricky bit is several solid nights of frost when it’s fully stiffend!

Nowadays it’s all heated windscreens. They don’t know their born!

Yeah if you’re lucky you get just a tiny amount of thaw or 10 seconds of rain and the sheet freezes solid and glues itself to the glass.

Yesterday I got properly caught out, I knew I’d put the bike in the back still wet (and, er, covered in frozen snow that I couldn’t shake off) but clearly it got warm enough to melt, then cold enough to freeze into a solid ice sheet all over the inside of the glass. Once I’d scraped it all off it was like it’d snowed inside the car.