One of the coolest images from the current spate of cold and snowy weather has to be this satellite shot of the UK by NASA…

Click for the larger version

And for a much bigger version (at a scale of 250m instead of the 1km scale above) you can go here, but it’s a big image. (3Mb in size)

When we went to bed last night, the weather wasn’t too bad – still the remaining snow and crap from the last couple of weeks.

This morning, that had all changed. Starting from about 5.30 – and don’t ask why I was up at that time – it snowed vaguely heavily. By this I mean “heavily for the UK“, rather than “Heavily for anywhere that’s used to decent snowfall, and is currently laughing at the UK“. All told we got about 2-3 inches in three hours, which meant that frankly I wasn’t going to go in to the office.

Fortunately, I can work from home just as easily as I can work in the office, only I get to stay safe and warm, and don’t have to make a non-essential journey.

Sounds like a plan to me, and it looks like it’s going to be a quiet weekend…

I didn’t get round to posting this before, but this is indicative of the amount of snow we had in our part of Norfolk.

Snow Depth

And yes, I know, people in America and Canada (and anyone else who gets serious snow on a regular basis) is pissing themselves laughing right now at how little it takes for the UK to go to pot.

So – following on from yesterday’s post about crunching the car, this is what I did to it…

The result of my sliding into the fence

Fucked wheel, flat tyre, buggered headlamp and bumper, knackered plastic bodywork, and a bundle of crunched connections and wires.

I’ve still not had any news about how much the repairs will cost – I suspect that’ll be Monday’s news.

Last night, as may have come to people’s attention, it snowed in Norfolk. Quite heavily in fact, with a heavy wind that meant the snow was horizontal in places.

It was also effing cold – in snow? Who’d have thought? – which meant that the road was slippy.

Coming home, I started slipping at one crossroads, and slowed down as a result. I knew the next bit was dodgy at the best of times – seen the results of several accidents there already – so I was down to about 15mph. The car slid, and rather than turning went straight on, up the verge, and took out the fence of the house that’s on the corner. (Again, that fence has been taken out at least four times to my knowledge – so I’m the fifth) It slid along the fence, popping out the wooden fence panels, and hitting the concrete fence posts.

It wasn’t a hard impact – just inertia and momentum really – and didn’t even trigger the airbags. But the entire front quarter is stuffed, I’ve lost a headlamp, front nearside panel’s gone, and the bumper’s stuffed too. It’s going to take some work to fix.

The insurance company I use (Tesco) have been really good so far. The recovery truck was out within the hour they said, and today I’ve started the claim, and just about everything has run smoothly. There’s one exception to that, but that’s a separate post.

More mortifying was the fact that someone had called the police – I don’t know if it was one of the houseowners, or someone driving past, but still, up they pulled, blue lights and all. Probably for the best, as the corner was still dodgy and slippery (the police car came up at about 15-20mph too) but all the same, pretty mortifying. Still, it means that as well as having my first “proper” accident, I’ve also had my first breathalyser test – blowing an absolute zero, which wasn’t a surprise – and given all my details to them about the crash. An interesting experience, to be sure.

So the car’s stuffed – but thankfully it appears to be mainly the bodywork, not the chassis or anything. And it could’ve been so much worse. After all, I’m not hurt, no-one else got hurt, and really it’s just a car and a fence.

This small video is absolutely fantastic – a thunderstorm in Toronto.

It’s taken by Sam Javanrouh from Daily Dose of Imagery, one of my favourite photographers. (There’s also an interview with Sam here, although that’s not related to the thunderstorm video)

All told, the video consists of 347 15-second shots, with two seconds between each shot. (I suspect he used his Pclix for it – he’s obviously better at programming it than I am with mine at the moment)

Well worth the effort, anyway.

Toronto Lightning Storm from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.