It begins

I thought the gritter was being a bit premature this morning, although to be fair they've been treating the roads for the past few days, as my bike tyres are now grey instead of black.  It was sunny though so I escaped for a long lunch break and went food shopping with my trailer, but I forgot entirely to take any photographs.

No sooner had I arrived home than the snow arrived: tiny, weightless hailstoney sort of snow which came and went, then it sleeted, then the microsnow eventually came a bit more enthusiastically and covered the ground.  What we have here, I think, is graupel, which is not actually snow, not hail and not sleet either; it's a German word that stems from graupe, meaning 'pearl barley' and is more like rime: supercooled water droplets plus snowflakes.

I suppose I shall have to get around to fitting the spiky tyres to my bike fairly soon.