snow on North Wessex Downs
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Nature Notes
Sleeting. The snow begins to fall at daybreak and continues sporadically throughout the day. For the first two hours it comes down fast and settles thickly, then turns to sleet, then rain, then back to snow. The woods provide a brown-screen backdrop for varieties of wintry precipitation in a moving panorama: snow in small hard […]
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Nature Notes
Blown Snow. In the hours and days before the snow, we barrow water round to the horses as tap, trough and water buckets freeze. The temperature falls to -9 at night. A prelude of snow falls hard and fast, turning the tarmac white in the time it takes to open Mum’s gate. We go out […]
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Nature Notes
A Raven in Snow. Our house is an island in the mud. Our plank drawbridge to the lane falls short. And then, at last, it snows. We wake to a white and would-be silent world, were it not for the wind ghosting eerily through the house in its unsettling northiness. We rush out to feed […]