I'm John Batser with my good colleague Simon Constable in the South of France in Paradise,

reporting for Fox and Wall Street Journal and other distinguished publications.

But we begin with the climate, watching the climate at winter from the south of France to the south of New England.

Simon, a good day to you.

Here we've had snow on the ground since early December, unusual for me, and very cold, touching single digits at night, and not much better in the morning, 15 degrees Fahrenheit, which is well below zero at Celsius scale. Snow now and again.

I see rain.

In other words, it's winter in New England.

Now, what is unusual is that I've never spent a winter in the south of France.

So how is it with you?

Good day, Simon.

Good day, John.

It's very cold and has been for a while.

We're hoping it goes away by the weekend, but it went down to 16 or 17 Fahrenheit in the morning for most of the last week.

And the high was 34.

So none of that is very warm at all. It's just warmer than where you are,

which may be very happy. Apparently, the French, the local French people are very unhappy about this because it's so rare for this sort of stuff to happen. We had a guy come around in his car

from the government to see if anybody had broken water pipes.

Luckily, we didn't.

So that's very, very good.

Broken water pipes.

I've seen those things snap.

Be careful, turn your water off.

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