Weather here and there!

This evening I read that there has been snow today on the Snake Pass, a section of the A57 in Derbyshire notorious for its treacherous winter weather. My weather app predicts a possibility of snow around here for tomorrow! Winter seems to have arrived!

Today has been quite cold enough, we have had rain, rain and more rain, with just enough wind to make you feel the cold and damp. So today all of my venturing out has been from the house to my daughter’s car, from the car to the supermarket, and back again. Bang goes my exercise record for this week!

I hope they have had some of that rain in California to finish off the fires over there. The people in the devastated areas had a visit from their president who still blames the fires largely on poor management of the forests. He has maybe changed his mind a little about climate change, no longer saying it is a “hoax”, saying instead that he thinks climate change scientists are politically motivated and that he is not convinced it is a manmade issue.

On the forest management issue, he is said to have tweeted this:

‘You’ve gotta take care of the floors, the floors of the forest, very important. You look at other countries wehre they do it differently and it’s a whole different story.
 ‘I was with the president of Finland and he said we have a much different, he said we are a forest nation, and they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don’t have any problem, it’s a very small problem.
 ‘I know everybody’s looking at that, to that end, and it’s going to work out well.’

Apart from the typos and the incoherence of some of the sentences, his tweet gave a point of view which apparently led to some trolling responses:-

 “I'm relieved that President Trump has the answer for stopping wildfires in the age of climate change. Who knew it was as simple as a "forest rake?" I searched for them on Amazon but couldn't find any. Perhaps a new product for Trump, Inc?”

“As a Finn, I would answer something witty here, but I still have some 228000 square kilometres of forest to rake, so I’m rather busy. Sorry about that.”

“Finland has ~73% forest coverage = 222,180 square kilometers of forests (world bank study). Our forests are densest in the world, averaging 72,000 trees in sq km. That's 22 billion trees or 4,500 for every Finn (yale university study).

Please send help.

Must bring own rakes”

“Honey, don't forget to polish the lakes too, it's your turn.”

Of course, in this age of false and manufactured news stories, I have no idea how true this is but the exchange, even if invented fiction, made me smile.

Maybe the Mayor of London should have persuaded POTUS to buy the water-cannon bought by Boris Johnson, when he was Mayor of London, and never used.