As I predicted in an earlier blog post, the cold weather has finally arrived, blanketing large parts of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and south-west England in heavy snowfall. Temperatures here in Canterbury struggled to reach 3°C and with a strong northerly wind it felt bitterly cold. We only had a few flakes of snow though.
While lots of people enjoy the snow, it does cause problems. The BBC have a report on 100 cars that are stranded on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall with the military being called in to helicopter motorists to safety. This country seems particularly vulnerable when it comes to responding to wintery weather, even when it’s been predicted extremely well for at least the last seven days. People in south Wales are complaining that they weren’t given enough warning of the impending snowfall, even though the Met Office had an advance warning of severe weather for at least two days before today.
Interestingly, this cold spell has been particularly well forecast by most of the models. It’s quite often the case in this scenario that the models overegg the possibility of very cold weather with the result being a damp squib with not much more than a bit of sleet or cold rain.
The outlook for the next few days tends to a slight increase in temperature, perhaps to around average. Wind speeds will drop leading to the possibility of frosts overnight.
Yesterday was a bit of a change for many people from the 
Each of the schools had spent the last couple of months designing and building robots to undertake a number of tasks such as fixing pipelines, rescuing dolphins, launching submarines and recovering artifacts. The event yesterday consisted of a number of heats followed by a knockout competition to find the best robot. As well as constructing the robot, each of the teams created a presentation on the theme of oceans.
What do I do when I get to America? Well, after I went to 