I’m still getting used to European winters. In Vancouver, it’s cold and wet and snowy and rainy and all, but the trees are almost entirely evergreens, so at the least there is greenery (of a sort – dark green branches, sopping wet against a grey sky is not as cheerful as you would think). Johannesburg has deciduous trees, but winter is so short (although it can be nasty in its own way), that you don’t often see bare branches like this: in fact you may well see autumn leaves and green fresh leaves all at once.
Preston is cold, wet, rainy, snowy and horrible in winter, and the trees all lose their leaves, so this, the naked branches, is a common sight. Today, at least, there was a tiny amount of blue sky to leaven the gloom, but it’s still all pretty bleak.
Preston’s winter sounds like Detroit’s. Since Michigan is the third-cloudiest state in the U.S. (after Washington and Alaska), we don’t get blue sky very often to cheer us up.