Evil of a snowflake in May

Cycling when it's cold is OK - you dress up warm, especially hands and feet, and krentch that little bit harder. Cycling when it's wet is OK when you're dressed in waterproofs and your bike's equipped with full-length mudguards. But cycling on a very cold and very wet day is none too wise. And yet the day looked reasonable when I woke up; chilly (+4C) though dry. The Las Kabacki was as full of joggers, Nordic walkers and cyclists as I could imagine on a public holiday.

Above: the Vistula, Wyspy Zawadowskie, a nature reserve midstream, just outside Warsaw's city limits, by a village called Kępa Oborska. Below: for the first time I catch the coal train in motion between Konstancin-Jeziorna sidings and the Siekierki power station.

Below: the power station chimneys in the background, to the right, the flood defence wall. Last year's floods did not breach this wall but left it compromised; the water level was two metres higher on the river side, the earth dyke dangerously sodden. Had the wall burst here, it would have made it impossible to deliver coal to the power station by rail. See how high the water was in late May last year.

Around 2pm it started to rain, lightly at first, and home was still a long way off. The rain got steadily heavier, the temperature started falling. It was absolutely miserable. My skiing gloves were sodden, as were my feet (there are holes where the pedal cleats are fitted to my otherwise solid cycling boots). And as the bus finally took me homewards, it started snowing - intensively. Large wet flakes of snow. The last kilometre of my journey, into the wind and sleet, saw me covered in white.

Above: home and dry, but look outside. It's gone eight o'clock, still light outside, and yet snow has settled on the lawn. I have never witnessed snow in Warsaw in May (previous last-snow records were 13 April in 1997 and 9 April in 2001). This is bizarre. And Manchester has just had a fortnight of unbroken sunshine and +25C heat... Climate change is happening, anomalous weather events are occurring ever more often.

This time last year:
Two Polands

This time two years ago:
A delightful weekend in the country

This time three years ago:
Greatest shock in six years of living in Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
Flag day