Bad eyesight hits careers after big 4-0
Weather warning as temperatures plummet after mildest New Year
Optician’s check-up
MILLIONS of over-40s feel failing eyesight has restricted their careers, according to research.
One in 10 of the 40 to 60-year-olds asked said poor vision made them too anxious to take on new challenges at work.
And 49% worried they were too old to take the leap and find a new job.
The survey of 1,500 older UK employed adults was commissioned by Acuvue, whose brand ambassador is ex-EastEnders star Martine McCutcheon, 45.
She needed multifocal contacts lenses as she was finding focusing on close objects had got harder.
She said: “I felt less confident as my change in eyesight was a real indicator that I was getting older and needed to make some adjustments.”
ANY hope that the mildest New Year on record might herald a balmy 2022 is swept aside today in a freezing blast of thundersnow.
Up to four inches of snow are expected to fall on higher ground and power supplies could be knocked out by lightning strikes, the Met Office said.
It issued a yellow weather warning of dangerous conditions including icy patches as temperatures plummet.
The worst of it will hit Scotland but other danger areas include the North of England and Northern Ireland.
Grahame Madge of the Met Office said: “We’ve got an area of high pressure across the UK that will remain in situ until the early hours. Then we’ll start to see the weather front coming in. As conditions get cold, we’re seeing temperatures drop to freezing quite widely.
“As we get the cold air, that will bring the temperatures right down.
“We’ve got the weather front coming in from the west and that moisture is going to bump into the cold air – and where you get that you will get snow.”
Thundersnow is caused by the same conditions that cause summer storms, when warmer temperatures on the ground clash with colder air above.
The difference is that in the coldest conditions, snow accompanies the thunder instead of rain or hail.
Mr Madge added: “Because you have got that differential it’s possible, quite easily, for warm air at ground level when it heats up to start to rise very quickly through the cold air and that’s what creates the potential for thunderstorms.”
Winter had already started to bite in some areas. A chilly low of -8C in Topcliffe, North Yorkshire, in the early hours of yesterday made it England’s coldest night of the season so far. Meanwhile Glasgow shivered at -4C. Tourist Sylvia Sanchez, from Costa Rica, experienced snow for the first time
GRAHAME MADGE
MET OFFICE SPOKESMAN during a visit to the Angel of the North in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear yesterday.
In Co Durham the morning traffic was hit by snow, and there was even a covering as far south as Cambridgeshire.
Rain is expected to sweep across the country tomorrow, with wintry showers likely to remain only on higher ground.
The yellow weather warning is in place until 11am this morning and includes the Highlands and Islands, Central, Tayside and Fife, the South West of Scotland, Strathclyde, Lothian and Borders.
It follows the UK’s warmest ever New Year’s Day on Saturday, when St James’s Park in central London hit 16.3C.
The temperature beat the previous record of 15.6C set in Bude, Cornwall, set more than a century ago in 1916.
That came after the country’s mildest ever New Year’s Eve, when Merryfield in Somerset reached 15.8C, beating the previous high of 14.8C set in 2011 at Colwyn Bay in North Wales.
VISION
Warm air rising very quickly through cold air can bring thunderstorms