The Beast from the East

Snow on our palm, camellia and magnolia trees

Brits love giving things funny names. When a cold wave (or polar vortex) sent air straight from Siberia over just about all of Europe it was dubbed "The Beast from the East". Here is Pau we almost escaped it, but we heard about how cold all of Europe was - there was snow in all sorts of unusual places. But eventually it arrived, suitably weakened, in Pau and it gave us a few hours of snow and a couple of days around freezing. This gave us a chance to test out the wood stove, and it worked fine. The combination of palm trees and snow was too good to miss, so we also took some pics.  

PS The Brits dubbed a subsequent weather system bringing some snow as "The Pest from the West". It didn't make it to Pau...