Red diesel and snow.

According to the Mail

Farmers have ... been warned they could face fines if they grit snow-blocked roads using tractors powered on red diesel.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) issued guidance to the National Farmers Union warning them not to use the reduced-tax fuel when gritting.

We Rigbys think the situation is getting beyond ludicrous. So not only are farmers, who might be able to help, being threatened with fines but the only way they can get their snow-clearing equipment onto the roads is if they spend time draining their fuel tanks to ensure every trace of red diesel is removed, and then refill with the undyed stuff - then repeat the process if they want to use their vehicle on their farms. Talk about labour-intensive, when a slight relaxation of the rules, or common-sense ignoring them because it's important would be much more useful.

Not only have councils been ordered not to salt or grit 'minor' roads, they've also been told not to grit pavements or hard shoulders on major roads - because there isn't enough salt or grit in Britain to get the job done. One thing they seem to have forgotten is that councils have a duty to maintain public footpaths so that nobody falls over - let's wait and see how many people make a claim for negligence, after falling over and breaking an arm or a leg on a dangerously slippery pavement.

The few people who could help out by clearing side roads of snow are being threatened with financial penalties if they do something useful, something of benefit to this country.

But the move has been criticised by those who claim it could stop farmers reaching neighbours stranded in the deep snow.

Under current rules farmers can only grit roads if using tractors powered by white diesel - the standard fully-taxed diesel for trucks, vans and cars.

Yes, we know the difference between red and white diesel. The red is a hard-to-remove dye. We also know that tiny traces of red diesel left in a tank that's then refilled with white diesel can lead to prosecution from over-zealous enforcers.

Geoff O'Connell, a parish councillor in Belford, Northumberland, said: 'Doesn't anyone at HMRC realise that we are experiencing a national emergency, one of the worst outbreaks of Arctic weather for decades?'

Clearly not! - But there have been having meetings to talk about it.

Maybe there is hope though, and farmers will be able to help out without being fined. There's more about the red diesel rules in Farmer's Guardian, which says:-

FARMERS should be aware in which circumstances tractors can be used in the current harsh weather conditions sweeping the UK to avoid facing the wrath of the law.

As many farmers are assisting with road clearance with ploughs, towing cars and gritting roads around the UK to support councils and local authorities, many may be unsure what is legal with the red stuff in the tank and what is not.

The National Association of Agricultural Contractors (NAAC) clarifies that tractors can be used for snow clearance on public highways when running on red, but not when on private land such as in supermarket car parks, or land that is not maintained by a council or highways agency. On the other hand, the NAAC says that gritting using red diesel is only legal with a dedicated gritting machine i.e. one that is purely designed for this role.

Tractors with spreaders which are either mounted or towed behind are not legal on red diesel, and even vehicles towing gritting equipment mounted on trailers, those into which gritting material is merely dropped or held in place with straps, or drop-sided vehicles carrying grit for manual spreading are not permitted to use rebated fuel.

More civil disobedience

In Portsmouth where

Residents defy 'crazy' health and safety advice to clear vital road ignored by council

It seems that

More than 100 snowed-in residents defied health and safety advice to clear a vital road which had been ignored by their local authority.

The householders armed themselves with shovels and pick axes and hacked their way through around three inches of ice and snow after becoming frustrated with their council's inability to do the job.

The team - aged from three-years-old to 80 - took to Galt Road in Farlington, near Portsmouth in Hampshire, and cleared all 400 yards of it in just over an hour.

And they managed to do it without anybody trying to stop them. Will they be able to claim a refund on their council tax?

Chilled oranges and marmalade.

Dick Puddlecote has a piece about snow in Florida, it's here.

Mrs Rigby couldn't, of course, ignore the linked articles which set her off on a happy wander round the internet.

This report says

Viewers in Flagler and Marion counties reported seeing snow flurries just after 5 a.m. Another viewer in Brevard County reported flurries along the beach at Cape Canaveral. Ice reports were also received from Volusia, Orange and Osceola counties.

and this report says

North Florida continues to face one of the coldest winters in its history. (my bold) Wednesday, the NWS center in Jacksonville braved 21 degree (-6C) weather, the city’s coldest temperature on record, Schuler said.

“It hasn’t been that cold since 1884,” he said.

"History" - now there's an interesting sort of word. People write about "history" as if history is something that never gets changed, but Mrs R recalls reading somewhere or other that history is always written by the winners, by the people who end up in charge.

If she was being really picky she'd contact the person who wrote that article to ask them when, precisely, the weather 'history' of North Florida started.

She'd ask if it started in fourteen hundred and ninety two when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, or if this history started in 1513 when Juan Ponce de León y Figueroa called it Florida (because of the nice flowers) or if it was in 1531 when Tristán de Luna y Arellano landed at Pensacola, or if it was a bit later and after usable thermometers had been invented.

Maybe she'd be told that the weather history of Florida started earlier than that, maybe it was so long ago that there weren't any ex-Europeans to see the cold snow and ice and write about it, and maybe she'd be told that weather happened before man was around to experience it - and clever 21st century record keepers and analysts use things like tree ring data to work out whether was cold or not (the annual growth rings are close together when it's too cold for a tree to grow very much) - a bit like the chap who used information tucked away in tree growth rings to make a graph.

Because of all these 'maybes' Mrs Rigby has tried to second guess what the journalist means, and she thinks they're actually talking about the fairly recent history of Florida, and only about the weather in one little part of it, otherwise, being really picky, 'one of the coldest winters in its history' would be cross referencing against weather way back when it got to look like Florida because of continental drift, erosion and so on - which was millions of years ago.

The best thing about history is that it includes yesterday, and most people can remember yesterday. They can also remember things that happened earlier in their lives. So, although Mrs R wasn't around way back in 1884, (we're back to the article in case you're confused), she was around when there were some awful snowstorms in Florida that wiped out the orange crops and made orange juice more expensive - and she knows it's happened more than once.

There are a few sites that mention things like that, and earlier snow storms too - they were very easy to find but Mrs R is resorting to Wikipedia which might not be the most accurate of sites because articles are often written by ordinary folk who have a lot of spare time, but it does at least give a general idea and has everything all in one place.

Here's a quick quote, before somebody gets in there and changes history :-

Snow in Florida is a rare occurrence, especially on the peninsula. During the Great Blizzard of 1899, Florida experienced blizzard conditions; the Tampa Bay area had "gulf-effect" snow, similar to lake-effect snow in the Great Lakes region. During the 1899 blizzard was the only time the temperature in Florida is known to have fallen below 0 degrees Fahrenheit (−18 °C).

The most widespread snowfall in Florida history occurred on January 19, 1977, when snow fell over much of the state, with flurries as far south as Homestead. Snow flurries also fell on Miami Beach for the only time in recorded history.

A hard freeze in 2003 brought "ocean-effect" snow flurries to the Atlantic coast as far south as Cape Canaveral.

The 1993 Superstorm brought blizzard conditions to the panhandle ...

Mrs R does note that the temperatures mentioned are not the same as those in the newspaper article, but thinks it helps make her point. You can read more here and here .

There's more about the snowy "Superstorm" of March 1993 - which made some snow land on Florida - here , and something from NYT about the Blizzard of 1888.

As for the weathermen and women and their, ahem, forecasts, how about this :-

Mark and Barbara Willard were at home in Wickford, England two weeks ago checking the weather forecast on the Internet before packing for their trip to Orlando — sunny and 70 degrees.

On Saturday afternoon they had the hoods on their brand new coats pulled tight around their heads as the walked down the International Drive tourist strip. The weather: 35 degrees and cloudy with a chance of icy rain or even snow.

Maybe these weather forecasters, who've been busy telling us we're all going to fry in 10, 20, 30, 40 or more years time, are now being a bit less warmist, because some of them have said it's going to snow in 'much of Spain'.

If they're right then they've given us enough warning to stockpile some marmalade.

Thanks Met Office!

According to the BBC at 18:49 GMT, Thursday, 7 January 2010

The Met Office said temperatures could fall to as low as -20C in England.

Do they really call this a weather forecast?

Mrs R can look out of her window, she can see the snow and she can see the clear starry skies and she could see the moon lying on its back, so she has a darned good idea that tonight is going to be extremely cold

She would have expected the Met Office to have been able to predict this "cold snap" more than a couple of days in advance - something pointed out by Andrew Neil when he interviewed John Hirst, the chap who gets paid a small fortune for running the Met Office. Andrew Neil wanted to know why the USA got weather warnings right, but the renowned (and very expensive) Met Office didn't provide an equivalent service for the UK.

Maybe information gleaned via Not a sheep would help, because surely the power supply people get more warning than us mere mortals.

It might be worth checking out this power supply/demand site to work out what the weather will be like. (Unfortunately Mrs R hasn't a clue what the proper name is, there doesn't seem to be a title anywhere.)

Okay, I know, it's getting a bit stale and a bit sameish, but my continued bashing away at the Met Office for being useless is really just a symptom of my/our general unhappiness of/with/about the way things are being done (or not done) in this country right now.

Weather forecasters are there to provide a service, and an accurate service too - because if they don't it means lives can be put at risk.

If there are likely to be storms, whether wind or rain, they should tell us.

If heavy snow or frost is likely, they should tell us.

They should tell us these things long enough in advance so we can make up our own minds about what we do or don't do - because some of us can use our initiative, we're not all totally dependent on government to make decisions about the minutiae of our everyday lives.

If we know what weather is on the way we can make up our minds about whether to take a long journey in a car, maybe to try to visit a very sick relative in a hospital a couple of hundred miles away - and that's the sort of quandary facing us Rigbys at the moment, and the Met Office is doing damn all to help.

Aside from that, we pay them for a service. The service they are supposed to provide is meant to help us decide whether or not it's a good idea to take a long walk in the countryside, maybe go out in a small boat, or even whether or not to plan an outdoor party.

But they don't seem to care, all they want to do is bamboozle us with an agenda designed to make us believe the planet is going to fry - but even if it does, they tell us it won't happen tomorrow, and frankly it's tomorrow that's important to most people, who want to know whether they will be able to get to the shops, whether their children will be able to go to school or college and whether or not they should get out of bed early to try to go to work.

And to make it all worse, Mrs R has just seen a government funded "information advert" telling her and her family not to waste water because the planet is running out of the wet stuff.

Honestly, you couldn't make it up, could you!

When snow melts it turns into water. If we hadn't had this load of snow we'd probably have had lots and lots of rain - like Spain and Portugal.

If the Met Office had made the right forecast at the right time then this advert might not have been shown, and might not, therefore, have been so utterly and ridiculously inappropriate.

Predicting snow.

Amazing isn't it!

Last year we were told that

Britain’s gas storage capacity is 4.3 billion cubic metres, providing no more than 15 days of supply

On Tuesday 5th January the National Grid announced an energy alert - maybe not enough gas to go heat all the fires and all the central heating systems and all the power stations unless somebody got some more gas from somewhere, fast.

Here's what the National Grid site says

The purpose of the Gas Balancing Alert (GBA) is to provide a signal to the market that demand-side reduction and/or additional supplies may be required to avoid the risk of entering into a Network Gas Supply Emergency. The trigger level for a Gas Balancing Alert is based on a combination of the absolute Supply & Demand levels and the impact of a potential breach of a Safety Monitor.

Hmm, well, we knew there wasn't a lot of storage space, we knew there wasn't much in February 2009 - but what was done to fix it? What department took responsibility to make sure Britain would survive a period of high demand - such as prolonged cold weather? It would seem nobody did anything, maybe they didn't think they needed to - probably because the Met Office predicted both a mild winter and a period of warm weather for the foreseeable future.

Over the last 24 hours people have been running around like headless chickens, emptying supermarket shelves of almost anything they can get their hands on, including torches, thermal underwear, thermos flasks and sleeping bags. Some people have resorted to using cat litter to 'grit' icy garden paths because there's no salt to buy, and have ended up making a terrible mess of their carpets. Halfords is doing its best to keep up with demand for antifreeze, but deliveries are held up by snow. And guess what, these retailers weren't able to plan ahead - because the Met Office predicted a mild winter.

Where the Rigby family lives it's difficult to get any fresh food, which is a bit of a nuisance because we emptied our fridge before Christmas and could do with refilling it again now we're back home. We Rigbys are without potatoes, carrots, green vegetables and not surprisingly there's no chance of buying salad of any sort. We have no milk, no pet food and very little breakfast cereal - and no prospect of getting any because the supermarkets (which are our only food source, all the little shops are long gone from Rigbytown) aren't getting deliveries because the roads aren't working properly. There's nothing to put in the Rigby's bread making machine because other people emptied the supermarkets of flour and bread mixes. The supermarket looked, in Mrs R's mind, like something out of the worst time of Soviet Russia.

It's a good job we've got a decent sized freezer and a cupboard stocked with things in tins, otherwise we'd be very, very, hungry.

Why has this happened?

Mrs R thinks it's happened because the supermarkets weren't able to predict demand - because the Met Office predicted a mild winter.

The main roads through Rigby town aren't too bad, but pavements are treacherous and side roads have been ignored by the council - because the council hasn't got enough salt or grit to deal with them, and anyway they're too bothered about making sure the motorways work. They probably haven't got enough salt or grit because they didn't think they'd need any - because the Met Office predicted a mild winter.

Who had to rescue people stranded on the motorways?

Up to 1,000 stranded motorists had to be rescued by the Army today after some of the heaviest snowfalls in 20 years left drivers trapped in their cars overnight.

It was the Army, the same one that joined the bits of Workington together again after their bridge got washed away and the same Army that's had it's finances messed with, whilst the office dwellers of the MoD got bonuses.

There seems to be a pattern here somewhere, because it's reported that the chap in charge, John Hirst, gets given a whopping financial bonus, taking his salary to :-

between £195,000 and £200,000 in pay and bonuses in 2008/9

and

The figure is a 25 per cent increase on the £155,000 to £160,000 "pay equivalent" for Mr Hirst in 2007/8. Mr Hirst had joined midway through the previous financial year in September 2007.

Now I don't care how much this man earns, as long as he does his job properly. I don't care how much anybody earns, as long as they do their job properly - more especially somebody who's paid out of the public purse.

Mr Hirst heads an organisation that has publicised and encouraged belief in global warming theories, and that has linked breathing out CO2 to climate change. Even the top Google weblink says "Met Office: Weather and Climate Change". Mrs R doesn't think the Met Office's job to be involved in either politics or pressure groups, she thinks they should concentrate on getting short term weather forecasts right.

They used to be able to do it.

The Met Office was originally set up to help seafarers. In 1944 the forecaster's strands of seaweed, thermometers, maps and barometers were capable of accurately predicting a clear weather window that would allow the Normandy Landings to go ahead. These days, with their multi-million supercomputer, they can't even tell us when we're to expect enough snow to bring the country to its knees.

Is it too much to ask that high-earning Mr Hirst does his job, and ensures that the Met Office does its job properly too - so that supermarkets can get the right stuff onto their shelves, so that local councils can stock up on salt and grit and so that we ordinary folk can have a good idea of what we might see when we look out of the window in the morning?

It shouldn't be too hard for them because, after all, they reckon they've got clever brains that can predict both climate and weather for 50+ years in the future!

When Mrs Rigby was little her Mum told her that whatever happened to the weather in America was likely to happen in the UK within a week or so - and in the last few weeks all sorts of US snowfall records have been broken. WattsUpWithThat tells us that ... over 1200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in USA. Even Florida and Miami are expecting the "longest stretch of cold weather in 15 to 25 years", so I sort of expected a bit of snow here.

And now, based on her own life experience coupled with her Mum's words of wisdom, Mrs R predicts that the current cold spell, along with the snow, will probably last more than a week - and no, there's no supercomputer at Rigby Towers, just a good memory and brains that still work.

Let's see if I get it right.

Blog Action Day 2009 - Climate Change

Apparently today is "Blog Action Day"

"Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web."

This year they want the hot topic, discussed by all bloggers round the globe, to be "Climate Change", and they want blogs to register with their site too.

Mrs Rigby notes that quite a few people are already talking about Climate Change, for example Samizdata, which is where she read about this 'action day' - she'd never have heard of it otherwise.

It's interesting that the BBC has decide to join the party, with an article telling us that in a very few years the North Pole will be ice free. Bit of a contrast to last Friday's article

You see, that's one of the problems.

The experts who want to convince us the planet is doomed, and doomed very soon if we don't pay a lot of money into carbon credit schemes, don't keep to their own script. They don't talk about "Global Warming" any more because they realised it isn't happening, although all the populist, high profile, reports say that it is. Today's piece on the BBC is a case in point, it directly contradicts the earlier article. Something within it has also been picked up within the comments on Wattsupwiththat The Top Ten Reasons why I think Catlin Arctic Ice Survey data can’t be trusted

Alan the Brit (06:07:15) :

timbrom (04:07:53) :
“The seasoned Arctic Explorer, who was the first person to trek to the North Pole alone, was forced to continue with just a simple ice drill. During the 73 day trek he took 1,500 readings, often during pitch blackness and with windchill factors down to -70 degree C. The team also took thousands of visual observations to give an impression of how the shape of the ice sheet is changing. ”
“Mr Hadow insisted the effort was worth it. He pointed out that no other readings of this year’s winter sea ice was available to scientists and surface readings can pick up changes in the ice that were not being picked up by computer models.”

Changes like recovery I presume!
Presumably they made those “observations” in daylight or they might have got a rather different impression in the dark! Taking “accurate” readings by torchlight would be tricky in most cases too.
1500 holes/73 days is around 20 holes a day. Is it feasible in those conditions to walk 6km (3¾ miles) per day for 435km & do that back breaking, arm twisting work, day in day out, breaking open the equipment, setting it up, drilling, reading, packing away again, loding up the back-packs, trudging off again, etc???? I am presuming for now that it was all manual work as battery life would be critical in such conditions for power tools. I have my doubts. As I understand it the exteme cold can play tricks with the mind for even the fittest of us, how do we know they were not so affected? Come to think of it, if they were using radar electronics for the first week or so that bumps it up to almost 23 holes a day. (They should have gone a year earlier & they could have hitched a lift with Jeremy Clarkeson & James May in their 4 x 4, although I somehow doubt that those two would actuallly want them aboard.)
Good job the good Professor managed to mention satellite data, or Pen would be right!

Another thing all these experts forget is that not all ordinary people are ill-educated. Some went through school, college or university before government got their hands on the curriculum and started massaging it to suit an agenda. It's very difficult to remove all traces of a good education, and bullying makes some people very stubborn.

There are people who don't trust government, and who don't trust big businesses. There are people who think they can see through global environmental policies, and believe they're just money-making scams. There are people who believe that wind turbines are a visual PR con, costing more to make than they'll ever give back.

All these people get called names by the establishment, they're almost as bad as the 'vile' cigarette smokers.

There are also people who are old enough to have lived through tough times caused by very cold, very long, winters. These people have personal knowledge of the cycles of climate - hot followed by cold - but they only see this data mentioned as an anomaly, because otherwise the upwards graphs wouldn't work. These people don't believe that anomalies cause snow to lay on the ground for several weeks, and normally ice-free rivers to freeze over. They believe low temperatures and climatic conditions cause it.

When people read weather reports of the earliest snowfall for x years they're again sceptical. Maybe the powers-that-be can explain this, reported on Wattsupwiththat

Early start to winter ≈20% of USA is covered in snow already

Here is the accompanying table and discussion:
October 13, 2009

Area Covered By Snow:	19.9%
Area Covered Last Month:	0.0%
Snow Depth
Average:	0.7 in
Minimum:	0.0 in
Maximum:	728.8 in
Std. Dev.:	2.1 in
Snow Water Equivalent
Average:	0.1 in
Minimum:	0.0 in
Maximum:	403.4 in
Std. Dev.:	0.4 in

By way of comparison, here is the October 13th USA snow cover for the last few years:
2003- .7
2004- .3
2005- 1.7
2006- 3.7
2007- .3
2008-12.7
2009-19.9

Mrs Rigby believes that climate changes, it's been changing for millennia.

Why should mankind be so arrogant, and believe we can mess with what the planet is doing naturally, and change natural cycles solely for the advantage of one single species of animal.