Chamonix snapshot #2 [jatp]

Wind of Okhotsk [photograph]

self-portrait on a railway board [jatp]

amber warning

Just saw this severe Met warning of snow over Warwickshire and neighbouring counties… The campus is indeed covered with snow, but not that heavily. Yet. (It is comparatively mild in Austin, Texas, even though the icy wind turned my fingers to iciles during my morning run there!)

Amber warning of snow

From: 0810 on Sun 10 December

To: 1800 on Sun 10 December

Updated 6 hours ago Active

A spell of heavy snow is likely over parts of Wales, the Midlands and parts of Northern and Eastern England on Sunday.

Road, rail and air travel delays are likely, as well as stranding of vehicles and public transport cancellations. There is a good chance that some rural communities could become cut off.This is an update to extend the warning area as far south as Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex.

at the foot of Monte Rosa

After last-year failed attempt at climbing a summit in the Monte Rosa group, we came back for hiking on the “other side” of Monte Rosa, at the Italian foot of Dufourspitze with less ambitious plans of hiking around this fantastic range. Alas the weather got set against us and thunderstorms followed one another, making altitude hikes unreasonable because of the fresh snow and frequent fog, and lower altitude walks definitely unpleasant, turning the trails into creeks.

While we had many nice chats with local people in a mixture of French and Italian, and sampled local cheese and beers, this still felt like a bit of a wasted vacations week, especially when remembering how reasonable the weather had been the week before in Scotland. However, all things considered, the previous week had seen a deadly heat wave cross the south of Europe that very week, so I should not be complaining about rain and snow! And running a whole week checking the altimeter instead of the chronometer is a nice experience.

Fourth Bayesian, Fiducial, and Frequentist Conference

Next May 1-3, I will attend the 4th Bayesian, Fiducial and Frequentist Conference at Harvard University (hopefully not under snow at that time of year), which is a meeting between philosophers and statisticians about foundational thinking in statistics and inference under uncertainty. This should be fun! (Registration is now open.)

Les Diablerets skyline [jatp]

The short course I gave in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, was highly enjoyable, at least for me!, as it gave me the opportunity to present an  overview of the field, just before our workshop in Banff and to stay in a fantastic skiing area for four days! While I found out that my limited skiing skills are gone even more limited, the constant fresh snow falling during my stay and the very small number of people on the slopes made the outdoor highly enjoyable, the more because the temperatures were quite tolerable. The above picture was taken on the only morning it did not snow, with a nice cloud inversion over the valley separating France and Switzerland.