Weather

I have spent a few minutes each day this week teaching Colin a new language. He already speaks about 6 or 7, and sign language too, but I felt he was lacking a knowledge of Scottish...and I don't mean Gaelic (it turns out he speaks that already!). I mean good old Scottish phrases like "Awa' an' bile yer heid!" and "Haud yer wheest!" (phrases that I had almost forgotten existed, and haven't heard in many years!!). I have even set the occasional bit of homework "Use the term Nippy Sweetie in a sentence" that kind of thing!! (He passed that with flying colours!! Excellent example!!)

Stephen was very relieved this week that his trip to Oklahoma was cancelled. There was a huge winter storm went through earlier this week - terrible winter weather, including ice storms that took out the power lines and left 500,000 homes without electricity. (All the power lines in the US seem to be overhead - there are very few buried cables. Consequently as soon as you get snow, ice, wind, rain or sun (have I covered all weather events?) then the power goes out! The bad news is that the storm is heading towards the North East over the weekend and guess where he is going on Monday...yup! He's off to Burlington, a ski resort in Vermont. I checked the temperature forecast for there and it was saying a rather chilly -10C during the day and -16C overnight!!!!! Better pack his thermals!! Just as well we are off to St Lucia in a week to thaw him out!!

There was an out of season tropical storm went through the Caribbean yesterday. It's only the 10th time on record that a hurricane has sprung up outside the season. Hopefully the islands affected will recover quickly. I'm slightly concerned about the "things happen in three's" principal. There was an earthquake off the coast of Martinique a couple of weeks ago (which is very close to St Lucia - you can see it on a clear day), now the out of season hurricane in the northern Caribbean...what next???