12z today - Northerlies and NNW'lies cover the UK as the Azores High ridges strongly towards the ex-Siberian High. The trough over SE England brought rain at lunchtime, with the flurries in the woods coming from convective cloud instead. Conditions at 12PM on Sunday: Thickness, 518dam, temperature 2C(dewpoint -4C). Wind from the NNW, 17 MPH. Today's high, 4C, last night's low -2C. (source: MetO, the 12z GFS and NOAA).

So, today marks the start of the much anticipated cold spell. It was certainly in evidence as I left this morning, with a strong and gusty northerly picking up little in the way of warmth from the North Sea; the air temperature was 0.2C with a grass temperature of -1.2C. Due to the wind and the dryness of the air there was no visible frost, although by the time I pulled up at the Trust an hour and 50 minutes later there was some hoar frost visible in the grass. The puddles at the Trust had a layer of ice on them and with an air temperature of -1C it was quite literally freezing!

After saying a quick "hello" to John (our safety officer) I had the place to myself. I steered clear of the Euros, as they're still getting used to Latea as Alpha. However, things have been much quieter of late and Alba's even been seen to defend Lunca when things get a bit heavy - he's every inch the Alpha male. As I'm not supposed to go behind the barriers near Kodiak and Kenai I decided to pay Duma and Dakota a visit, via a little used gate near their kennels. They were laying in the icy grass, watching me, but as soon as they heard me slide open the bolt on the gate they came galloping over to say "hi".

Here's Duma - both wolves seemed very interested in the camera today!

After a quick scratch the wolves turned away and as I was leaving they had one of their dominance displays - unlike the recent Euro upheaval these are benign and serve more to reassure both wolves of their relative positions. With the peak of breeding season around 3 weeks away for them such displays will become even more common...

(Dakota sumbitting to Duma - that isn't an "I'll hurt you" type of bite, it's just a muzzle grab.)

I then headed up into the Obs Room, which gave me an excellent view of the European wolves howling. Lunca's on her own in this picture, with Alba and Latea sharing a howl in the background:

There's a clip of the wolves howling today below, complete with something that almost looked like a rally but didn't develop into one:

http://www.medvale.net/wolves/05-02-20/febwolves.mp3

Other volunteers started to arrive shortly afterwards and today's cleaning job was the European kennels - not that there was much to do there as they only went in briefly last night.

Preperations were soon underway for today's walk (a Spice walk, which is a private booking by a group which organises days out for people). Unusually, despite it being noon, the puddles still had ice on them. Here's a picture of Dakota, paws splayed, eyeing up an icy puddle:

Further into the walk I grabbed a photo of what happens if you stroke the wolves in just the right spot! They'll lift one of their hind paws if you find the correct location, something which Caroline (one of our handlers) is demonstrating in this photo:

I'd not seen it like this before, but the lake was half frozen over today:

Near the end of the walk Duma and Dakota put on another dominance display, much to the delight of the crowd. This time Dakota's "sucking up" to Duma:

There was a brief snow flurry in the woods, little tiny flakes which made me think of an old saying I've heard: "If the snow is fine, there's more behind." That'll definately be the case this week and if I'm lucky I might just get to see the woods in white next Sunday.

Back at the Trust I did a brief stint behind the merchandise counter (including buying some bits myself which I left behind - doh!) Then the call came to take Kenai out for a walk around the fields, something which I relish of course.

Kenai had some dried mud on her muzzle today, which looked slightly daft - she'd presumably been digging earlier:

The walk was superb and as usual Kenai stopped several times to rub up against us all - and as she was showing signs of wanting to jump up I decided to go down to her level when I was making a fuss of her. I wasn't the only one giving her some attention, as the next photo shows. It's Alex (the assistant senior in charge of us trainees) giving Kenai a good firm belly rub:

Once again Kenai was able to meet the public before being returned to her enclosure. As I've done the previous few weeks I distracted Kodiak by racing along the side of his enclosure, with him chasing me on the other side of the fence. This is one of the biggest "nos" of the Trust, as running away from a wolf is seen as deeply submissive and thus the wolf becomes dominant over you - not good if you ever want to handle said creature! Kodiak sees himself as dominant over pretty much anyone and although it means I won't be able to stroke him through the fence, racing seems to give both of us some fun as well as providing some action for the visitors!

After the visitors had left I soon followed suit and headed back to Kent. As I came within a mile of Sheppey the skies turned a strange orangey colour (reflecting streetlight) and it started chucking it down with sleet and latterly wet snow - indeed, there was a melting slushy layer on all the cars in the area as I pulled up at home. By then the air temperature was down to 1.2C and with soaking roads there could be problems should that lot freeze tonight!

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