VIRUS DIARY: It's mud, mud everywhere in UK's 3rd lockdown

LONDON (AP) — It's apparently not enough for Britons to endure almost 120,000 COVID-19 deaths and face a new variant of the virus that scientists say is more contagious and more deadly. Not enough to struggle through a third lockdown in less than a year, a shutdown now in its ninth week in London with no end in sight.

No, all of this has to come smack in the middle of Britain's mud season, the time formally known as winter.

While everyone in the U.K. is already lacking Vitamin D, the sun chooses to take a months-long work stoppage and named winter storms kept sweeping eastward across the Atlantic. Storm Bella marched in right after Christmas, bringing gusts up to 106 mph (92 kph) and rains that dumped 3.2 inches (80.2 mm) on a village in Scotland. A sodden, freezing version of a hurricane. Storm Darcy roared in last week from the opposite side, bringing an icy Arctic blast and the U.K.'s coldest temperature in 25 years.

British meteorologists have as many ways to describe rain as the Inuit do snow, since the daily forecast is just an estimate of how much rain will hit when and with what force. Even my husband, who grew up in sun-soaked Southern California, realizes that one just runs or walks or shops in the rain here; it's impossible to dodge it.

Unlike the southeastern U.S., which floods during the summer-fall hurricane season, Britain floods in the dead of winter, bringing hypothermia alongside germ-laden waters. Rivers across England and Scotland are bursting: 73 flood alerts were in effect on Friday alone. And this year, few gyms or schools are available for emergency housing for fear they will turn into COVID-19 factories. It's a Dickensian time.

The lockdown in London began Dec. 20, literally the day before the darkest day of the year. Forget about fun: bars, nightclubs, museums, gyms, theaters and cinemas...