There she blows!

I've just enjoyed several unseasonally warm days working in Milan. In fact, this morning I conducted an extended meeting while sitting outside on a sunny balcony. The same time last year I'd been shuffling through several inches of snow. Even more astonishing, last Monday in London, the overnight temperature never fell below 12.5C. It's starting to feel like a regular Australian winter over here!

My flight tonight was delayed more than an hour due to a combination of heavy fog in Italy and gale force winds in London. Wind gusts reached more than 40 miles an hour at Heathrow and continued most of the night. I believe it. Our large 757 aircraft was tossed around the sky on final approach. I was rather grateful to be back on terra firma once we'd touched down.

So far wind has been the dominant feature of winter. We've had more wind in the last few weeks than I recall all of last season. Wind isn't a common feature of London weather. Thanks to the protection afforded by Ireland, most of England experiences fewer than 15 days of gale a year.

A day of gale is defined as a day on which the mean wind speed exceeds 39 miles per hour for 10 minutes during a 24 hour period. We had at least ten days of gale winds in December and have similar weather for at least half a dozen days since 2007 began. More wind is forecast for Saturday and Sunday.

All this wind is going to be put to good use. On December 18, the Department of Trade and Industry gave the green light to an enormous Wind Farm in the Thames Estuary. It will consist of 341 gaint turbines, occupying an area of 90 square miles, 12 miles off the coast of Kent. The £1.5bn project will generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity when completed. Another modern landmark is on its way.

The view from our Milan office.