Warming?

Against a background that north-eastern USA and Canada have again been hit by a severe snow storm and South Korea is suffering from an unaccustomed wave of bitterly cold weather, we here are also being warned of yet another cold snap.

Is it surprising? I mean, it’s winter after all. So. faced with fair warning that snow flurries may descend upon us today, we in Casa MacDonald will muffle up when we go out later on.

The question is: Where is this global warming that is going to cut our fuel bills then?
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Trapped!

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We arrived home yesterday morning from a very enjoyable one-week’s cruise on Fred. Olsen’s Balmoral to find that four Eurostar trains had failed inside the Channel Tunnel trapping 2,000 passengers on them. We saw also for ourselves the tremendous gridlock along the eastern end of the M20 caused by the closure of the Channel Tunnel and the suspension of all ferry services due to bad weather.

There is nothing one can do about bad weather and, perhaps, even the best of contingency plans could not have coped with the snow storms encountered in the last couple of days.

I listened to Eurostar’s pr lady on television last night explaining that the trains became cold in the cold weather and then hit warm, moist air in the Tunnel which affected their electrics. Maybe, that is the true explanation.

But I paused to wonder why, if this was really the case, hi-speed trains throughout Europe and those also in places like Japan, all manage in cold weather to go in and out of tunnels without conking out.

At least it wasn’t because of leaves on the lines or the wrong sort of snow!
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