Winter Wonderland

One of the unusual things about St Andrews is its comparatively balmy weather. A former professor of mine described the Kingdom of Fife, in which St Andrews is located, as the "banana belt" of Scotland. On account of its amazingly close proximity to the North Sea and Gulf Coast, the temperature in St Andrews only rarely drops below freezing, and--as I was told shortly after I moved here for the first time--it never snows.

This claim that it never snows, which I dutifully repeated (with great chagrin) to friends and family alike was fully borne out by my first winter in the UK, when it was cool but rainy for most of the winter months. It was repeated to my parents before they came last winter, narrowly missing an airport closure in Edinburgh and barely able to visit Stirling Castle because of road closures (Stirling, incidentally, is further inland and closer to the Highlands, so it was perfectly acceptable to have had snow there). However, we also had a mostly white Christmas here in St Andrews, by the North Sea despite the Gulf Stream. (Here's my Dad by said North Sea and Gulf Stream:
).

Right. So last year was an unusual winter--one of the coldest in recent UK history. It was a lovely and beautiful change from what I'd expected, and I figured that few people would ever get to see the lovely glory of St Andrews covered in snow as I had.

Until now.



This is Isaac very early on Sunday morning, after we both saw the amazing snowflakes drifting across the windowpane and dashed outside for an impromptu midnight hike, snowball fight, and snow angel creation. Please note the large gust of snow being blown up out of the sea towards his head. It was just that windy . . . and much glorious fun.

We've had flurries every day since Friday, and only the fact that we live so close to the Gulf Stream has kept us from getting the two or three feet of snow present in towns only a few miles further inland. Ours has mostly turned to ice and slush, but it's beautiful during the flurries and immediately afterwards!



Also, I'll be trying something new for December. A friend of a friend is sponsoring the December Photo Project, in which one blogs or posts a photo every day for the first 25 days of December, and I'll be attempting this (we'll see how it goes). You may not get much explication, but you could potentially see some pretty photos . . .