Winter frosts

The old rhyme of the months of the year says "January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow" - nearly right!

I dont think I can remember such a long hard spell of cold weather like this before. The headlines say "Britain in the grip of longest cold snap for 10 years" but I measure the time by how many weeks on end in the past that I have to break the ice in the animals' water buckets. You can see above how the sun has melted the light frost where it slanted low across the field and caught the top of the tussock, but left the hollow with icy crystals.

Luckily it has been dry for weeks, so no snow for us. But most mornings the frosts are usually harder than the one above. The BBC forecast says things like

Forecast : Hard frost tonight, cold and grey tomorrow.

Today : Much of the night will be cold and clear with a widespread hard frost again. It will turn cloudier from the north by early morning with a few flurries of light snow.

Tomorrow : A few snow flurries at first, gradually dying out. Rather cold with mostly cloudy skies.

And the temperatures hardly rise above freezing.