How to Survive Winter

There’s a fascinating set of pages on the BBC site: The Year So Far. It details averages and means in temperature, rainfall, etc, and how the current year is behaving. Well worth keeping an eye on, I think.

Also from the BBC is a page concerning that most typical of winter weather in these islands: Rain, Drizzle & Fog.

Finally, since I read it with great pleasure a few years ago, I thought I’d provide a link to Eddie Graham’s A Dublin Weather Diary. It’s probably of interest to meteorology geeks more than anyone else, but it details things like the usual dates of the first air frost, the coldest days of the year, and other hard to find information. It was published in 2000, so it probably won’t be completely accurate for the warmer, wetter weather we’ve had since, but it provides a good context.

Metcheck, my favourite weather-prediction site, have just put up their winter coverage pages. Of particular interest are the FrostRisk and SnowRisk pages, and their RainRisk page is up year-round.

Metcheck’s service is pretty accurate, especially for the next three to four days, and I keep their “Today” forecast open in a browser tab pretty much all the time.

Various winter food sites today:

The UK Food Standards Agency have recommendations for food in winter.
A retrospective on a radio series broadcast by the Irish national channel, RTÉ: Winter Food.

And Nigel Slater, writing in the Observer, gives us some fine winter recipes.

To get our coverage of winter started, here’s some authoritative advice from the American National Weather Service:

Winter Weather Safety and Awareness

BBC Northern Ireland have their own Winter page

And still with the BBC, Winter Wine & Food and more Winter Food.