All over Britain people have woken this morning to find themselves living in a magical winter wonderland.

Just to be clear, however: all that white stuff you can see outside your window is not actually real. It does not exist because it does not accord with the experts’ projections, as best illustrated by the most-read online story in the history of the Independent. The one from 2000 with the headline “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”

Despite the story’s incredible popularity, the Independent decided last year for some strange reason to remove it from its archive so that now when you try to look it up all you get is a “Page not found” error message.

Luckily, that kind soul Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That? has preserved the story for posterity in the form of a pdf. This means that future generations will forever be able to enjoy such classic sentences as:

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”.

The man responsible for that phrase – Dr David Viner – formerly of the University of East Anglia’s legendary Climatic Research Institute now has a job as a Strategic Global Leader on International Climate Resilience.

I’m not sure what that job title means. Luckily for Viner, I doubt many of his clients do either.