THE BIG QUESTIONS
There aren’t many where I live on the east coast, but just how many lochs are there in Scotland? – I
Incredibly, the country has something like 31,400 freshwater lochs and lochans (small lochs).
During the last ice age, massive glaciers gouged out U-shaped glens which filled with water to become lochs.
Canada has the most lochs – or lakes – in the world, with more than three million bodies of water, more than the rest of the world combined.
Looking out of my kitchen window as the rain battered down in torrents earlier this week, my mind started to wander and I found myself wondering where the driest, least rainy place on earth would be? – J
The average rainfall in Scotland is 1.55 metres per year. That’s not much, until you realise the average height of a Scots person is 1.72 metres!
So if you are looking for somewhere that doesn’t have rain up to your chest, you should head to Antarctica.
While hot deserts such as the Atacama in South America may seem the driest places, they do get tiny amounts of rain. The The Friis Hills in the Mcmurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica haven’t had rain in 14 million years.
I’m sure a certain gentleman in America has something to do with it, but I’ve just found my name, Donald, is hardly given to new babies nowadays. What was popular when I was born in the 1960s? – D
Donald wasn’t in the top 10 of boys names during the decade. The three most popular were David, Paul and Andrew. The girls’ were Susan, Julie and Karen
So far, this year’s most popular names are Muhammad and Lily.