It's suddenly got really cold and frosty. It comes as a shock to the system, after a reasonably mild December, when the temperature falls below freezing.
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| Temperature Record for 28 December 2016 |
It was the first time this year that the average daily temperature was below freezing finishing at -1.1°C or 30.0°F. I can't remember recording another day where the minimum daily temperature number was equal to the maximum temperature number. The only difference was the minimum number had a minus sign in front of it. The low temperature was -3.7°C and the maximum 3.7°C. It obviously doesn't work in Fahrenheit where the equivalent temperatures are 25.3°F and 38.7°F.
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| Monthly Records for December 2016 |
Now I'm not going to go on about how cold Wednesday was as it looks like it will be easily beaten by Thursday. If you examine the records for the 29 December 2016, shown above, you can see that it has started off even colder with the temperature falling to -5.6°C or 21.9°F around dawn. It's our coldest start to the day since the 16 January 2013 when the temperature was -5.8°C or 21.6°F. Thursday looks likely to be our coldest day of 2016.
It moves into 13 place in my top twenty coldest days listing.
When it's as cold as this on a morning we have a sparrow tree as they wait in the crab apple tree for their turn to eat at the seed feeder.
However, this morning it wasn't possible to fill up the feeder as the top was frozen to the rest of the feeder making it impossible to refill with seed.
There was some seed in the feeder so once it warms up a bit I'll top it up. I put plenty of seed on the bird table so the sparrows shouldn't go hungry. The bird bath was filled up with hot water to thaw out the frozen water left over from yesterday. There's some ice formed on the pond which doesn't happen very often.
I don't think that we'll be visiting the plot as the ground at home is well and truly frozen.
It's now 10:30 on Thursday morning and it's warmed up to -3.3°C (26.1°F) so maybe I'll pop outside and see if I can fill up the feeder for the sparrows.
Posts
Enjoyed this post ... playing with the numbers ... the frosty pics ... all the little birds in the sparrow tree ... somehow all very peaceful
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed the post Jane.
DeleteThose would be Tree Sparrows? We've been at 8 degrees C in Edinburgh today and above zero since Barbara arrived so I am surprised!
ReplyDeleteUnusually cold for us but it's warmed up a bit now (Friday morning). It's a tree full of house sparrows by the way. We keep our own little flock of them!
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