6 degrees... it's a heatwave!

It's 6 degrees - positively a heat wave! ;)

The snow is steadily melting and soon it will all be gone. I must admit I feel a tinge of sadness seeing it gone because it is such a special and rare occurence to me. When I first came back from Taiwan there was still quite a lot of it around but now it only exists on rooftops and even then not much is left. I can see a lot of 'wet patches' left on roofs where there used to be big slabs of snow.

Actually, there are still chunks, clumps and slabs about the place, basically in places that are constantly in shade and never get any sun. But most of those are dirty grey chunks, not that beautiful pristine white you associate with snow...

One good thing about Shanghai's weather is that it is almost always sunny. I know it rained heaps while I was in Taiwan (likewise it also rained heaps in Taipei - no doubt caused by the same high/low pressure system in the area) but generally speaking you don't get that horrible constant grey drizzly weather you get in some places (not mentioning any names Melbourne and Europe ;) ) I sometimes wonder if I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - that kind of weather really, really affects me and my dad said it affects him too. We used to live in Melbourne before Sydney and he told me he couldn't stand it, hated it in fact, which was one of the reasons we moved.

Weather and climatic changes are a funny yet scary thing... I keep having thoughts about that movie "The Day after Tomorrow" and something I read about the Three Gorges Damn (due for completion in 2009) being blamed for causing catastrophic weather patterns in Southern China recently. It's one of the few man-made structures visible from space (it is that big).

The thoughts that if that dam really did cause such huge changes in weather patterns.. well it's just mindboggling and damn scary.

Read more about the dam here and here.