Winter driving

I remember snow drifts in South Wales as a child. Highest on our street was snow gradually going from ground level to the top of a two storey house. In our back garden it was a constant 2 feet deep and it was a big back garden.

The worry of my parents was when it started melting in the back yard it would 'leak' into the house around/under the back door. So my brother and I stood on kitchen stools and leapt out into the snow.... made it to the shed and some how got it open (it was deep in from of the door) and get shovels. Then started on clearing most of the back yard.

Never seen as much snow in the UK since.

I was referring to one in the 70s.

Snow going now. Temp has risen and fine Manchester drizzle has started.

Just in time for City v Arsenal at the Etihad...

It's been 38-41 here too in Dorset - good old degrees F.

What's good about degrees F? Most units are arbitrary, of course, or based on an arbitrary fixed point. But Fahrenheit picked a real fixed point and got it wrong. And yet somehow his scale gained currency and has failed to lose it.

R4 had a US meteorologist last week talking about the extreme cold snap in Chicago and, while he seemed to be on top of the arctic airflows and the climate change that is disrupting them, when he got actual temperatures, I simply couldn't understand him because he talked in nonsensical Fahrenheit units. Bizarre.

Odd one really, like you, I prefer, and indeed always have favoured thinking of, and indeed quoting temperatures in Centigrade. My in-laws still insist on trying to convert any temperature quoted into Fahrenheit with a "what's that, about seventy isn't it?" type of reaction to a broadcast or comment on the weather.

Yet, despite having grown up with pre-decimal currency, they don't insist on trying to convert money back to the way it was, but they do prefer to use imperial measurements.

I suppose when it comes to temperature and measuring, I'm fairly comfortable using either, but lean towards metric for measuring and Centigrade for temperature.

Which is exactly how I am with everything else.  And I can sort of cope with the idea that 60s is cool, 70s comfortable, 80s warm and 90s hot - but when it gets below zero ºF, as it did in Chicago, it all goes tits up because it's based on a false premise.