I PM'd Ang yesterday because our news is full of stories and spectacular pictures of the sea on the UK south and west coasts and wondered how it was affecting her in deepest Dorset. She's certainly OK but it's been very wet and very windy in her area plus she seems to be busy with work etc.

We don't suffer too much with weather extremes in the UK (certainly not temperatures around -40c as in the parts of the US right now) but we have had a queue of Atlantic lows following one another and bringing heavy rain (up to 50mm/day) and very strong winds for weeks. I'm glad the winds have been relatively mild from the south or south-west because that amount of precipitation as snow would have been very bad. Strangely, the gaps between the lows have brought very short period of quiet sunny days, at least here in Derbyshire. So we managed a few pleasant but very muddy walks over the Christmas/New year.

Our current weather pattern is just something else we can blame on the USA! According to an article I read yesterday the low temperatures in N America are doing a lot to accelerate the jet stream that's bringing us our bloody rain. So I hope all you lot over there are happy you're causing we Britons so much misery :)

Robi