Since returning from Meribel just before New Year, I have been following the daily snow report from there which you can link to here . After a lean start to the season with just one real snowfall in December which thankfully the cold temperatures of the Christmas anticyclone held on to until we had left, there was one 'dump' of snow last week and now ... disaster! It is all melting due to unseasonally warm temperatures. Here is what today's snow report states...“Global warming or not, it must be admitted that the climate has become totally mad”. Not my words, but those of the local Meteorological Office today, commenting on the fact that the temperature is currently typical of the end of March. It has been balmy in the resort today, with the sounds of snow melting from roofs and birds in full song, and people are wandering around town without jackets. On the mountain too it feels more like the end of the season than early January. All over France the average temperature is 8 degrees milder than normal as a mass of warm air moves in from the South-East. Today the French newspapers are full of photos of sunbathers on the south coast. Balmy and barmy weather for January.The past couple of days we’ve had rain in the resort, and yesterday the rain level rose to around 2500m – i.e nearly to the summits.
Of course this hasn’t done our snowpack any good. Off-piste the snow is sugary and heavy and has those naturally occurring balls of snow which run down steep slopes of their own volition. Normally we only see those in March and April.The forecast is for another week of equally mild weather."
Meanwhile, here in the UK, the weather forecast this evening is yet again full of warnings of storms, heavy rain and flooding - precisely the weather which global warming is likely to bring more of to Scotland.
It seems to me that there is hardly a day now when climate change does not feature on the news agenda.
