Ryongsyong

Fairly violent snow just started here; only moderate-heavy but being blown around and flung to the ground. Won't last long though judging by the radar. Today has been a terrible day for us up here, we'd kept our 12-14cm since Wednesday very well, only losing maybe 4 or so cm, but today we've lost a massive amount and now there's only a minimal amount of the roofs and the pavements and road has become slushy ice rather than compacted snow. That's what comes for having temps of 2C all day I suppose. Still, it hasn't been bad considering it's Gtr. London.

I live in London now but grew up in Torquay and was stunned to see the temperature for the town being reported at 9am today as -11C! Is that right? Amazing really, certainly don't remember that sort of thing when I was living there.

I apologise on behalf of the south, it's embarrassing seeing what the news people get up to, although it's more accurate really to just say that they're London-centric rather than South-centric. I remember in Feb living in Guildford and they never mentioned the fact that we'd got over a foot of snow in places, preferring instead to go on about London. But really they paint a picture that is far from the truth—we had 10cm here, and I went out earlier on to the supermarket in town. There were cars driving by on the snow just fine, the buses were all running, people were out and about, the shops were open, and no one was 'panic buying' bread and milk. Come home and switch on the television, you'd think the apocalypse has hit; it's a load of rubbish and I know it creates resentment for the other people to have to put up with it, but all I can say is that it's the fault of the news people, not the rest of us who are happily carrying on with what, in the grand scheme of things, is not a lot of snow at all. But that doesn't make for such an interesting 'story'. Whether people who are tasked with reporting facts should be worrying about whether the 'story' is good-enough or not is another matter. Certainly saying 'blizzards have swept the south', which is a direct quote I saw earlier, is in no way a fact.

Bounds Green is now seeing the first properly heavy snow since it first started last night, so anyone nearby, especially south-west of here, look out for it!

A few pictures of Bounds Green in North London at around 11am-ish. It began snowing properly again at around 07.45 and since then has not stopped once, although on a number of occasions it has been extremely light, as is the case now. The radar seems to show that it will start up properly again soon though what with that band to the north moving south. Snow depths are around 8cm, a pleasant surprise as we weren't promised much up here, although given that I used to live in Guildford at the top of a hill, and was snowed in with over a foot of snow back in Feb, I'm a bit jealous of them now that I've moved to see that they're doing it all over again! But I understand that some haven't seen much or any snow at all so am happy with my lot. And it's just started snowing with nice big flakes outside again so that's good! Looks like the band has arrived.

Here's a quick picture from Bounds Green in North London. It's been snowing here since 22.15, always fairly moderately but steadily and so far we've built up about 3-5cm as the snow began settling instantly on the ice-cold ground. So far in that time the only thing that's been past the house have been some foxes. When the picture was taken the flakes were a bit small and weedy but as I type things have perked up again and there are nice big flakes briskly falling to the ground. As with all things it looks a bit more impressive in real life than in the picture .