THE weather in our area has been unremarkable compared with other winters, although those who've slipped on the ice might beg to differ. Even though night and day temperatures have been very low, what really gives the weather a wintry dimension is snow fall and West of Rochdale to the coast and north to Lancaster have had very little snow for a cold spell that has lasted for three weeks.

Other parts of the country have been different and had the snow normally expected over at least three years, and sure enough disruption has resulted.

The amount of snow, together with the weight of traffic (traffic as we know is often reduced to a crawl whatever the weather) has rendered it pretty well impossible to avoid the chaos we've seen in Central Scotland and North East England particularly.

Related to this the global warming debate is often misunderstood. As an estimation I would say Britain forms well less than one per cent of the globe.

Last year the globe had the warmest year ever and this year is set to beat that record. Last year Britain had a very cold winter but warm summer and this winter looks like it could be cold again.

Global warming is very complicated and a couple of theories I've heard suggest this pattern could be set to last. One suggests the warming of the Atlantic could cause the Gulf Stream to flip and there fore no longer provide us with the warming of our climate leaving us with the climate of other places sharing our latitude like Montreal, and the other suggests the massive amounts of ice in the arctic on breaking up will considerably cool the seas in and around our latitude.

Mr MW Greenhalgh Shaftestbury Avenue Lostock