Wednesday 27 January 2010

3 types of rain is not enough

There are 3 different types of rainfall. This jolly tutorial explains them.

http://worldlywise.blogspot.com/2008/01/types-of-rainfall.html



3 types is not enough.



In the Fens, you can see the rain coming. Curiously, you can often see it better than the Ramsey MET office, which persistantly and stubbornly refuses to believe the weather it can see coming. For miles. You can quite clearly see the beginning and end of the rainfall, the darker, sometimes glinting tunnel of rain from that cloud 30 miles away (yes, you really can see for thirty miles from my garden). And yet, some wayward synapse in my head will tell me, "You don't need the umbrella. Like you can carry it with the buggy anyway".


So I am a familiar drenched figure in the town. The woman who remembers the raincover for the children, but who resolutely shuns hats. And has eyebrows insufficient in density to channel the fall of rain away from her (once) mascaraed eyes. As such, I have knowledge of rain and these are the rain truths.


  • All rain is worse when pushing a buggy.

  • Tiny wee droplets of fairy like looking rain get you bone wet faster than anything.

  • "Mist" in the Fens is "rain" anywhere else.

  • You know that washing line? Fenwomen, put it away. From September until May. Below sea level, damp is damp.

  • When it says "Flood Warning" it really means it. And quick.

  • No matter how hard the rain, how flash the flood, the amount of dog shit in the town will not have decreased by 9am the next morning. It will still get on your buggy wheels, but hey! Now you have puddles to push through instead of scraping it off over the sink.


On the other hand, when the floods freeze, you can do this....



Welney Marshes recently held ice skating festivals. If I could do it, i'd have gone. Maybe as a Fenlander I should learn.



This little clip is a lovely video from the Guardian website of the skating December 2009.http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2010/jan/14/cambridge-fen-skating






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