What's the weather like where you're right now? Here in Vienna it's just freakin cold! It's 14 degrees outside (actually not that cold, but after summer it feels _really_ cold, especially if the inside temperature in the morning pretty much equals the outside temp...)... I had to take out my trusty old heat dish to get my freezing feet warm since the central heating didn't kick in fast enough... Summer's definitely a thing of the past! And it's grey and rainy outside...

I've noticed it getting quite a lot colder at night -- down to around 7C on some mornings first thing, but it soon warms up after the sun rises. It's cold enough for my Mother to be getting the electric blankets out, which is a source of worry. I wish they would stop making those things!

Right now, in Brussels, it's 15C, nearly windless, and some inky-black low clouds are starting to drift in, to keep us on target for the 800mm annual rainfall total.

15 degrees actually sounds good, here (Florida) it's about 32C. Just a little too toasty for me.

Not sure I made it clear, I meant 15 degrees Celsius, that means 59 degrees F.
At school we started wearing jackets and hats in class today... and really got htinking about sealing the windows DIY style. As well as jokingly thinking about the installation of electric fan heaters... my only guess: if we actually do that, we can already try to get a fuse box key and start stocking 10A Diazed II fuses...

Ranger,
I know that you were speaking metric, like I said its 32C here, which means a blistering 90F. I wish it were only 59F(15C) here. Even 20C would be nice.

Oh yeah BTW with the humidity here(heat index)it feels more like 39 Celsius.

Inches and pints are dreadful enough, but of all of the non-SI/non-metric units, I think fahrenheit is by far the silliest.

Even the BBC stopped giving the temperatures in °F about 15 years ago. I think my parent's electric cooker bought in 1969 was the last time I saw it on any equipment.

Yep, and it's darned annoying! You notice though that when we get the very rare blistering heatwave they still revert to it to some degree? (Excuse the pun ), e.g. "It reached 35 Celsius in London today, that's a whopping 95 degrees Fahrenheit."

It's very variable here at the moment, but autumn has definitely arrived. It's the wind, rain, and general gray dullness that I don't like, but the temperaures aren't actually that low yet: 11:30 a.m. and I'm seeing 60 outside (a shade over 15C for you SI and European folk! ).

Supposedly it is drier in your general area than the average for the country, isn't it, Paul? There was something about water shortages in some areas of the UK in the Belgian news during the mini-heatwave earlier in summer, and the banning of hoses. I still can't quite believe that fuss in 1976, when my grandmother, in Wales of all places, was in a drought and the water mains were turned off except 19h-21h every evening. Mind you, if you look at Portugal and Spain, that's becoming a really serious situation. Makes me wonder if there is going to be any Rioja and Bairrada in the future.

Are they metering UK water yet, or is it still on the old flat-rate tariff?

Hi,

It is 15.4C outside the server room in Carbrook, Sheffield today. and 16C inside the server room It is a nice crisp day, I have been sat outside this morning. At least it isnt raining which makes a change for Sheffield. I think it is much better cool, makes it more enjoyable walking around, fewer tourists and the brats are all inside! I havent a clue how hot or cold it is in farenheit. Perhaps we should all convert to Kelvin in which case, it is 288K outside and 289K inside

Reminds me of a comedian (whose act I won't do justice) who travelled from the US up into Canada.

"So I didn't realize they went by kilometers/hour up there, I get on the highway and I'm like speed limit 120? Awesome!?!

"...so I'm driving around with it on the wood, I come up on a school zone - 'Caution, School Zone, slow to 60...' Sweet!!!"

Today it is noticeably warmer, 20 Celsius. We actually opened the classroom windows to get it warm... and we fired up an electric kettle in our classroom to get some tea... nice to have a steaming mug in your hands during class...
Apart from that it's been grey and rainy all the time for more than a week, with only short breaks.

There's about one situation where I use non-metric units... and that's sizing iron pipes. Until today steel gas and water pipes have escaped any efforts of standardization. Austria went to metric long before WW I, but no rule without exception... ok, 1" and 2" boards are also something you'll occasionally see, but not officially.

The mixture of systems is a bit of a PIA.
Here in the states it is still a real colage of metric and SAE units. Even though I am partial to SAE measurements it will really be nice when every thing is all metric. Unfortunately there is a strong resistance to change. So, the transition overhere has become a rather arduous task.

I despair of it. The UK started metrication in 1965, and they still have not got there yet. It is a mystery to me how anybody of my age (b 1968) will never have been taught anything but metric, and yet when I left the country about 10 years ago, they were all arguing about bananas by the ounce, led on by a man who appointed himself the "metric martyr", older than me by only a couple of years.

If you meet people who say they like the imperial system because it is "easier", tell them to picture one pint of water, and then ask them to tell you how many cubic inches that represents. So far, only one person has ever given the correct answer to me, out of probably about 20.

On the other hand, if you repeat the question using litres and cubic cm, only very very rarely do people get it wrong. Even my Mother , schooled in the 40s, knows it.

Seond that on the unit mix. When I first came to the US I was pretty surprised to see soft drinks sold in 1,5l bottles, whereas milk is sold in 1/4 and 1/2 gal. packs...

After all I find it quite surprising it's possible to play US audio tapes and CDs on European equipment and vice versa, considering how many different TV, radio broadcast,... standards we have around the world...

Audio tapes (compact cassettes) were invented by Philips, which is a Dutch company. There were a number of incompatible cassette formats in the early 60s (and those old 8-track loops were popular in the US; less so in Europe) but after Philips released the cassette spec. as an open standard the others were squeezed out. US cassette vendors licensed the same general standard as everyone else.

CDs were developed jointly by Philips and Sony, so again, the standard was in place and various US organisations subsequently just sub-licensed it.

There seems to be a bit of a format war brewing up now for the next generation of DVDs (HD DVD versus BluRay) As though betamax versus VHS wasn't bad enough.

Don't forget Video 2000! Still got a working machine and like 60 tapes! 8hrs of video on one tape, without LongPlay...

Ah indeed -- turn the cassette over. "Simply years ahead", was the company's ad. slogan at the time.

I have a V2000 machine on permanent loan to my cousin because we share a morbid brain sickness to do with the Eurovision song contest and the only tapes that I have of the years 1976 to 1979 are in V2000 format. I don't even think that VHS had arrived in Europe by that time.

After I left the UK, the V2000 machine, with its PAL-I modulators, was of no use, so it went to cousin, similarly afflicted by knowing how Monaco joined in for the first time in 1959, and how even though Luxembourg won in 1973, the contest was held in the Dome in Brighton (UK) in 1974, when ABBA won it, and other useful facts far too exciting to go into now.

One of these days I must go and visit him with the laptop, and transcribe those into .avi files, before the VCR decays irretrievably. He says it still runs, but with what I know about Philips hi-fi audio decks of a similar age, also from the same factory, the drive belts and other such parts are going to start popping quite soon. They don't make nostalgia like they used to, do they.

Not only that, but who's got a Philips N1700 VCR format machine? That's the one with the square shaped cassette and the reels are on top of each other. The picture quality easily surpasses Beta and VHS, but alas head wear and mechanical reliability of the cassettes is appalling. Having said that I've never had to replace any electronic components or belts in two surviving machines which must be now about 26 years old.
In fact come to think of it,with all my ancient VCR's reliablity has been exceptionally good. Those piano key operated VCR's are built like battleships....none of this unreliable switchmode supply, plastic gears that break, and belts that last only two years nonsense. I restored a ca. 1979 Sanyo Betacord VTC9300 only a few days ago, to sit on top of the Decca hybrid CTV in the living room. All it needed was a set of belts. But what a classic, having one chunky AC synchronous motor to drive the whole lot, heads included. And despite the tape running past the heads during fast winding, they seem to last forever.

It is the same thing with most consumer equipment.

The very first models sometimes still have a couple of glitches, and those normally become obvious very soon. But once those are ironed out, the early models tend to have very good build quality, and to have trouble-free and long lives.

It is only in subsequent models that they begin revising the design to find where cuts can be made.

Consumer equipment in general these days is hard to deal with, though. The worst thing is that everything is glued or riveted together, so the very act of dismantling it to make tests and an inspection will be destructive. The second problem is that everything tends to be in custom ICs so you end up having to replace a whole board, and that's if you are lucky enough to find a source.

That said, who thinks that the quality of electrolytic caps is getting poorer and poorer? I'm sure I've been noticing more failed ones in the last couple of years than previously.

How many cubic inches in a pint? Who gives a flying monkeys ****! The Imperial system worked fine because it was user friendly for ordinary folks. 'Mrs Cutout' is not a Nobel Prize scientist & has absolutely no interest whatsoever in the exact length of the Orinoco in nanometers. Temperature in degrees Kelvin? OOhh! we'll all be boiled alive in our beds!!!

Alan

See. You don't know, do you?

Yes -- We're supposed to have less than half the national average rainfall here, and with a weakly developed summer maximum


Ah, summer '76. Tall ice-cream sodas every day after school. camping in the tent in the back garden every night, and seeing standpipes set up on streetcorners on the news.


It's a mixture. New homes are going straight on to meters, but older properties are still on flat rate (myself included). In this area at least, you can switch to metered service but have the option of reverting to unmetered within the first year if you wish.

After a year, or when a property changes ownership, the meter has to stay though. The rates for my area are here:
http://www.anglianwater.co.uk/index.php?sectionid=35&parentid=14



Our decaying state education system may have switched to teaching only metric in the 1970s, but Brits of our generation still learned Imperial measurements from friends and family, private schools, etc. (I was born 1966).

Go up to a hundred people in the typical British town and ask how much they weigh or how tall they are. How many do you think will answer in kilograms and meters?

I'd say that the rebellion now is not so much about which system is better, or easier, but more with the way the government is dictating what people use and trying to impose draconian penalties on those who refuse to comply.

Unless something is done to change the proposed law, after 2010 it will become illegal to even display an Imperial equivalent alongside the metric on packaging and signs.


1 Imp. pt. = 34.68 cu. in.

1 U.S. pt = 28.88 cu. in. (wet), 33.6 cu. in. (dry).


As Alan pointed out though, how often does one need to make such a conversion in everyday usage? Pints to gallons and pints to fluid ounces covers most everyday conversions, and they're easy. Same with inches, feet, and yards, or pounds and ounces. The Imperial and U.S. Customary systems grew up around units which represented everyday quantities, and that's why they're liked.

Even metric France still retains the pousse and the livre, albeit that the latter is not the same as an English pound.

Oh yes, the format way is nothing new. Have a look here for some notes on those earlier short-lived formats:
www.8trackheaven.com

I still have several boxes full of 8-track cartridges, and an 8-track recorder.

Just as has been mentioned about earlier VCRs, that unit was built like a tank compared to today's junk: Solid metal chassis, big AC synchronous motor on the deck, controls and jacks fitted properly to the chassis instead of being supported only by soldered joints.


I'm working purely from memory as well, but I think VHS was introduced into the U.K. around 1977 or 1978.


Because it was the second year in a row that Luxembourg had won.

Eurovision, 1956 - 1969

Eurovision, 1970 - 1985


P.S. Is it just me, or did Anne-Marie David look rather like Marie Osmond?



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 10-05-2005).]

We Imperialites can console ourselves with those measures the Bureaucrats can't metricate:
Yonks.
Yups, (an old Forest of Dean word meaning lots).
Years, months weeks and days, etc.
A splosh.
A thinny. [ refers to a hand-rolled cigarette]
Brimfull.
Drips, drizzles and splashes.
A good soaking.
A Larrup.
Taller than me.
A Shortarse.
And a Welsh measure I never fathomed out, "Over by there", which is said in a lilting tone with no hand, head or body movement to indicate either distance or direction. All Welshmen understand this, no foreigner ever gets it.
And my favorite; The British Standard Handfull.

Alan




[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 10-05-2005).]

Hi Ragnar,
Well,
The weather down here at the moment is a real lottery.
It's supposed to be spring, but I'm not too sure, we had snow here about 2 weeks ago and since then we've sort of had alternate hot and cold days.
Paul,
Man, if you did that here during the summer, you'd just about be run out of town.
Water becomes a very rare commodity here during hot weather.

I had two Siemens (Grundig license) machines in a row and both died rather quickly (though the second one probably had the head fried by a bad tape) and never came up to my expectations. Now I have an Ingelen 20VR22 (Philips VR 2022 license, Austrian made) and it's built like a tank! The picture was much smoother right from the beginning.
I also have a Sony three-format (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) Betamax machine, probably with mechanical failure. Switching it on just results in a high-pitched howl of a motor starting up and idling without any load.

You forgot to add the British Standard smidgen, and the British Standard dollop.


I think you may have misunderstood Mike. I'm not talking about opening up hydrants to play in the water or anything like that.

Some areas of the country had such low water reserves that summer that water supplies to houses were cut off and the standpipes were installed to limit the amount of water people could use to that which they could carry home in containers. In some cases they even had to use tankers to truck water into the area.

The reservoirs had already started out low due to a dry summer in 1975, and the long hot summer in '76 just about finished them off.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/1/newsid_2492000/2492981.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/water_week/66193.stm

By the way, I think somebody made a typo in that second link. See if you can spot it!

Oh yes, it was quite warm and sunny here this afternoon. Temperature made it up as far as 523 Rankin.

Ah, but the British Standard Handfull was unique, because you could only measure one thing with it.

Heres a clue; Jugs.

{Pardon Alan??}

Sorry Mike! (said with a little titter.)

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 10-06-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 10-09-2005).]

Paul,
Ahh I see what you mean Paul.
Sorry I just seem to be mis-reading things like never before at the moment.
I'll get better though.
A stand-pipe is a stand-pipe, maybe I've been watching too many American movies from the 1980's where they opened hydrants up on a hot day, to let everyone play under the water.
Not sure who does this, but I think DougW has something to do with it.
He'd have the spanner!.

I don't know how it's done in other municipalities, but...

In New York City, you have to go to a neighborhood firehouse and get a "sprinkler cap" (essentially a nozzle cover with holes bored into it) attached to the hydrant you want to use.

Some hydrants (especially in residential neighborhoods) have special locks on the valve stem so that only the fire dept can un-do them. Others, you can un-do with a simple spanner.

The purpose of the sprinkler cap is to keep the pressure in the acqueducts from going down (and to avoid having small kids getting knocked on their kiesters by the high-pressure jets of water).

Funny that a thread about cold has a flaming folder!

Here in So Cal it has been quite cool especially at night, but we're going back into the Santa Ana winds pattern (winds coming from inland deserts) and a bit of a warm-up. Hope we don't get more wildfires though....

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 10-10-2005).]

Thats why we brought up the fire hydrants

"Winter draw(er)s on!", as Ma used to say with a little chuckle at her 'joke', usually followed by this little verse from Grandma Hing's childhood in the 1870's, which sums up winter for me:

"By heck, it's cold!
Cold as a frog in an ice-bound pool.
Cold as the blade on an Eskimo's tool.
Cold as charity, (and that's ruddy chilly).
But not as cold as our poor Willie,
He's dead, poor bugger!"

Alan

Ireland's metric change-over is almost as flawed as the UK's.

We adopted metric measurements around the same time in the early 1970s. However, schools continued to teach imperial measurements for a few years after that and then both... It was quite a while before they went to fully metric.

Even though metric measurements became the standard for selling goods, people didn't really adapt. While it's compulsary to display price per kg or per liter or whatever. It's optional to display price per LB or per Pint etc and very few people will ask for, say, meat in KGs. This applies to younger people as much as it does older people. It's quite strange.

Also, a lot of UK and Irish food companies didn't actually convert their container sizes. They continued to sell in imperial measures and just converted the labeling to metric. This made the system look ridicuously confusing as there were some very odd awkward direct converted figures printed on containers.

Body measurements are almost exclusively in feet and inches and weight is in stone. The only people who use metric are the medical profession.
European shoe sizes (not metric, but harmonised) are starting to creep in though as they're just easier due to the smaller size graduations and the fact that the UK sizes printed on shoes are often inaccurate anyway.

We changed all of our distance signs to KMs quite some years ago. However, it was a badly carryed out change over and we ended up with a mixture of some signs in miles and others in KMs for years. This wasn't the metric system's fault, more a question of incompetant local councils here.

Then, finally last year we converted the speed limits to KM/H. As of 2005 all cars are sold with KM/H speedometers or at least with the KM/H dial in the more prominant position with miles in the inside.

In recent years, we're seeing a more logical approach to metric measurements and people are starting to feel more comfortable with them. It's not something that's easy to change a very well engrained centuries old system.

As for Irish water... it's 100% free of charge. No metering at all, paid for out of income tax! Any suggestion of even thinking about privatising water supplies or charging for them would probabally put a government out of office. So, it's very unlikely to ever happen.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 10-10-2005).]

It's 7 years since I was over there, and I remember seeing a real mixture of signs at the time (I was around Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Cavan area mostly). Driving toward a place could result in signs saying 10 miles, 14 km, 6 miles, 5 miles, 7 km, 5 km, 2 miles etc. Very, er, interesting.....

That's nothing... in Italy you can drive towards a place and see 8km, 6km, 10km, 4km, 2km... all the time driving straight towards your destination!

Today was the first day they fired up the heating at School... almost a miracle!
The school's been on Energy Contracting for some tim now, and since it doesn't really pay off the contractor's solution to making the guaranteed savings is simply not heating most of the time...

After a few days here of 85+ degrees F temps, we are expected to drop more than 20 degrees over the next few days with some rain and thunderstorms moving in! Then we are expected to heat back up into the 90's by the end of the week.....

So Calif. weather can be very strange sometimes!!

As a former Midwest boy (Ohio) I must say I do miss the defined four seasons....

We get the same in England sometimes, except it's miles of course.

Autumn is definitely here now with some days being gray and wet, but it's not that cold yet and we're still getting nice sunny days as well, up into the low/mid 60s.

Paul,
Sounds like your weather and my weather are about the same at the moment.
We went into Daylight Saving time last weekend and apparently the weather is supposed to get warmer after that.
Going by the weather we had in the last week, I'm not convinced at all that this is true.

We come off daylight savings at the end of the month, so it will soon be dark evenings, signifying that winter is on the way

Boy,
I see on the Late International weather last night that temperatures are really dropping over Europe.
I must say I'm glad I'm not in some parts of Russia at the moment.

Finland's already had snowfalls, I think.

Just judging what some recent web-cam pictures I've seen.

Yesterday evening was downright freezing for me. This morning I relented and ended up taking the BFC (Big Fat Coat) out.

Temps are below freezing now and there's a light covering of snow and ice. Doesn't feel as cold any more though, I've gotten used to it after the first day. I only hope it'll stay cold, because otherwise I'd have to get used to the cold again and again. And I just love snow... even in the dirty city!

It's been around zero here for a week, which is a long cold spell for Mayenne. We've got some snow coming, I think. I'm going to build me a snowman! Second childhood, [v. dangerous!]

Alan

In Stockholm the first snow came (and went) this weekend. They say it is unusally warm this year, yet the first day with ice covered cars was in the middle of October. Those metrologist must have been raised in Sibiria...

Winter is definitely on the way. I flushed my cooling system and refilled with fresh antifreeze a a few days ago in readiness.

The weather people here are telling us that we're in for a cold winter this year. It's supposedly going to be one of the coldest for many years.

Right now it's snowing lightly and the ground has a thin snow cover. Could be more snow for my liking. So far the "3 snow flakes -> total traffic chaos" reaction hasn't set in - surprising!

35C and dusty here in Sth Australia, going to Switzerland for work in January and average there is 0C in Lausanne. Not looking forward to freezing my ass off. Only gets to 0 here once or twice a year in the early hours of the morning, I hate miserable cold weather.

Billy Connelly Said "there no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes"!

This picture brought to you courtesy of Alan Belson:

It's just been wet, windy, cold, and miserable here the last couple of days.

They've already had some snow down in the southwest of England though:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4471790.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4472748.stm


Midwesterners and New Englanders, feel free to laugh out loud!



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 11-26-2005).]

It's thawing... tomorrow in the afternoon it's supposed to get real cold. We'll see... if the forecast is good it's usually wrong

Getting nice warm here in Auckland New Zealand Day 24°C Night 18°C Humidity 70%

Talking tape formats. Sony had in the 70's also a format called "Elcassette" which used ¼ inch tape in a cassette and ran at 9.5 cm/sec like the reel to reel machines.
The cassette was about the size of a Beta cassette but thinner.

I still use reel to reel to copy cd's on for long mixture of music on 26.5 cm reels with autoreverse, I do admit that I like to see the reels turning around. instead of a disc which disappears in a slot, new tapes I get on Ebay for quite good prices.

I once bought a banana crate full of tapes... and they're shot. Torn, repaired (obviously by glueing the tape ends together, the ends not lining up, glue squeezed out everywhere and they tend to tear there again)... and it's close to impossible to listen to the tapes because recordings are a wild mix of rare finds (like Comedian Harmonists) and extreme rubbish all on one tape.

Weather: temps going up and down around freezing point all the time. This morning I slipped on some ice... the sidewalk only looked wet.

Be careful there Ragnar!.
I'd hate to read here that you'll be laid up over the festive season because of broken limbs.
That's one thing I hate about winter, everything gets so slippery here, it's a terrible time for elderly folk.

ahh! I wish I was in NZ! Here in Hungary everything is frozen. But I have new shoes and that helps me thru!

Here you can check any weather you like:
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=budapest

Temperatures are oscillating around freezing all the time. Annoying! Also we had strong winds the last few days, now they died down. A few days ago some scaffolding collapsed and three streets were blocked due to fallen items from storms. Not nice.

Today the ground was slightly frozen again, I'm more careful now though, so I didn't even get close to slipping. For christmas the forecast predicts rain.

Tomorrow is the last day of school before the holidays... at least something to look forward to...

Alice Springs, NT 3.50 pm: 41C (106F)

We had 115 degrees F in Phoenix last July! The construction trades must have it rough in that weather (speaking from a cushy cubicle farm in an air conditioned office building) :-)

Today the srong winds picked up again and it was snowing madly, only getting the ground horribly wet. Ugly! But nice to watch from inside, as long as you don't look at the ground.

The problem is not the Winter, but the city and the dark. I'm in an office which has windows, but all of them look to walls, which are 4 stories high, so absolutely no sun comes in here.

That doesn't seem to help my bad mood. :~/

However I'm looking for a new job, and I hope my next place will be some more light.

I hate artificial light.

I feel sorry for you Gloria. I can understand that you want to work somewhere else.
Are you allowed to grow some plants at work?


Nothing beats sun and a blue sky.
Auckland 26°C and 46% RH.

The last few days have been cold (-5 to -3 C) but sunny and nice. Today temperatures went up to +4 and it was snowing madly in the morning. Then it turned to rain. Now it's raining. On Friday it's supposed to get cold again. I'd love to have some real snow again, like we had between Christmas and new year's eve. I even think it's fun to watch all car drivers go crazy at the first few flakes of snow... 2 or 3 years ago a parking car had to be towed because it stuck out into the road so badly it blocked the tram tracks... or at least I feared so, sitting in a tram anxious to be late... fire brigade arrived within less than 5 minutes, 4 guys got out and pushed the car aside, just using elbow grease...

Or when the tracks freeze up or get blocked by snow and trams go to weird destinations because the tracks won't switch any more...

I see on the BBC International forecast this morning that some parts of Russia are having temperatures of -26C.
I've only felt cold like that once in my life and I thought I was going to die.

Want to hear about cold... right now the town I live in has officialy shut down for the morning (we will know about the afternoon around 12 noon or so). We are dead smack in the middle of a blizzard. We are getting 10 to 15 cm of snow and the winds are gusting to 80 km/h.

Take a look at http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/city/pages/nu-21_metric_e.html

The other day it was -35 degrees celsius and -57 with the wind chill. My inspection jurisdiction is the Baffin Island and the high arctic regions of the Canadain Territory of Nunavut.

Welcome aboard Rick!


And I thought Nebraska was cold in January!

We had some frost here in East Anglia before Christmas, but nothing since. It's been typical British weather here since the New Year -- Cold, wet and miserable some days and then sunny and relatively mild on others (even hit 50 in some parts!).

Today it's been fairly sunny, but the night was below freezing, resulting in a thin ice cover on every horizontal surface - nice and slippery.

THis past weekend, we had some rain on saturday, which then turned into ice. The day & night was below 0 C.

There were deposits of ice on the ground.

This has been a weird winter so far.

Be prepared, there is a 20% chance of Europe going to -40C [yes minus 40!] next week if the cold air over Moscow moves west.

Alan

So true!
There are still some remains of snow that didn't melt and it's getting colder again.

Last night we had a cozy -18 here... that's a record for the last 20 years or more. And it's supposed to stay until thursday or Friday.

Midsummer storm in Auckland

Gales, windspeed up to 120 kms/hour 70 knots
heavy rain and the odd power glitch.

temp 20°C 70F and 90% RH

Temperatures are from -16 or 17 at night and go up to -11 during the day, with moderate winds. At least it was really sunny today.
The next few days it's supposed to get back to a normal -4 day high along with chances of snow.

Temps gone up a little... but still well below freezing and not a single snow flake in sight.
Ice is too uneven for real nice skating.

Skating?! In this weather?!

Alan

Well, it's gone up to just below freezing right now, but it's supposed to get colder again. No snow...

SNOW! Finally it started snowing! I hope it will stay, it's downright perfect, considering my holidays just started yesterday!