The Freak Accident That is Storm Emma

It's the 1st of March, the meteorological start of spring.

And the college has been closed today as well, this time also for staff members. The weather here has become so unpredictable that the college thought it safest for everyone to stay home. Students are not even allowed to fetch work left at college to take back and finish at home.

This has caused a lot of debate and crises around accommodation since most of us face our next deadline on the 7th of March, as does our film project.

I already blogged yesterday that the weather effectively cancelled our shoot - and even the RTS awards, blimey! But whereas yesterday was relatively mild (-3° and wind gusts with 12 mph), today has been a slightly different cup of tea. The temperature in and of itself is not the issue with just about -1°, but the wind took up speed to 32 mph and whereas the visibility yesterday was at about 6,4km, today it is merely 800m.

For me, who lived in Sweden and experienced much more difficult weather (down to -35°, 1,5m snow fall overnight, and visibility sometimes less than 3m) this 'lockdown situation' feels kind of strange. Where I live, the snow is in between ankle-high and shin-high and I was still shopping groceries, but public maintenance workers are already roaming in my street with their yellow visibility vests.

The closure of college today effectively means that we not only lost a day of filming, but also already an entire day of editing as well, since I booked out the Avid 5 machine from today onwards until Tuesday. With one day of missing footage and one day of missing edits, we will be unable to hand in our final product in time.

Which is why we have to file for mitigation and a prolongation of our deadline.

Hooray to the glory of paperwork!