Cold with light cloud cover. We're having a prolonged cold spell; there's been snow on the ground for the past 10 days, when it usually only lasts for 2-3 days, and it's turned into a sheet of ice on some of the pavements where it's been compacted by pedestrians and gone through several partial thaws before refreezing. My pond has a thick sheet of ice over it too, with icicles around the artificial waterfall. I like this cold, bright weather much more than the constant rain and heavy grey skies we've had in recent winters. There was an anomaly in the jet stream for several years that kept directing Atlantic low pressure systems to the UK, but it went back to normal in late 2008 or early 2009 if I remember correctly, and we've had much nicer weather since then.