This morning we had a sufficiently hard frost for much of town to be dressed in white.
Why am I remarking on such a perfectly normal thing? Because it’s no longer normal. We’re a thoroughly maritime climate, meaning we get neither cold winters nor hot summers. But twenty years ago we’d have had our first such frost sometime in November, and the coldest days would remain below freezing all day. Indeed, the government in the 1980s introduced a “cold weather” payment to help pensioners, which was triggered when the temperature maximum remained below -2 for several consecutive days (I forget how many).
And now, a first visible frost comes only in February, and is pretty much gone by 11a.m. No wonder things like English wine are becoming mainstream!
