In this issue of Weather

We begin this month with an account of some very wintry weather in mid‐January 2016 in Hong Kong. As Chun‐kit Ho and his co‐authors describe in ‘A rare frozen precipitation event in Hong Kong’ on p. 359, a fall of freezing rain and deposition of frost were quite a shock in a climate dominated by tropical weather, causing considerable consternation and requiring a well‐organised response from a variety of agencies, as well as the public, in general. Old newspapers may be a useful source of historical data, as described on p. 366 in ‘Obtaining meteorological data from historical newspapers: La Integridad ’ by Juan Añel and his co‐authors. Before meteorological networks were established, there was a growing interest in weather observations (as well as some attempts at forecasting). The newspaper La Integridad reproduced observations made at a school in Pontevedra, northwestern Spain. Following correction of errors, these daily observations have extended our knowledge of the weather of this region, as well as providing information about the climate and the way it has changed since the late nineteenth century. On p. 372, we move on to a fascinating well‐illustrated description of unusual optical phenomena made in northern California by Mila Zinkova. ‘Sunset mirages involving ducts’ revisits a popular topic for many Weather readers . Windstorms are another topic often reported on our pages and these affect many parts of northwestern Europe, as much as anywhere else. In ‘Analysis of physical factors of the windstorm Xaver in Poland: post‐hazard review’ on p. 378, Ramos Ribeiro, Rodrigo Rudge and Dorota Rucińska track just such a storm that caused damage in many countries – not least Poland – in early December 2013. Relatively little has been published about the regional climates of Iran. On p. 382, Lily Mirafzal focuses on the effects that cause inter‐annual changes in the southeast of the country with a view to the production of long‐term weather prediction in ‘Zahedan climate and January–March composite analysis forecasts’. We hope that you have enjoyed the variety of material published in Weather during 2017. With a good broad selection of papers available to us – for which we thank all our authors – 2018 will be another year of great interest and variety.