A Strangely Persistent 'Thing of the Past'

Today it really is the 1st of March – sorry about yesterday's gun-jump. The first day of Meteorological Spring, and while the snow lies round about, deep and crisp and even, and the bitter East wind howls, it's cheering to recall the 20 March 2000 front page story in The Independent headed 'Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past'. It was written by one Charles Onians and quoted the view of climatologist Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia (later the focus of the 'Climategate' scandal) that, thanks to global warming, snowfall in the UK would become a 'very rare and exciting event' and 'children just aren't going to know what snow is'.
 This was reputedly the most-cited Independent story ever, and yet it has mysteriously disappeared from the paper's website and cannot be found there by any search term. How odd.
 The story can still be found, though, on various other sites, e.g. here...

One of the good things about this kind of weather is that it brings some surprising birds flying in from wilder places in search of food. Yesterday a couple of Lapwings were wheeling over my local park – a joy to see this once common farmland bird (now on the Red List)  in such a setting.