Well’ I went to school in the 60s and 70s and I don’t remember anybody closing the schools then for a little bit of white stuff. Not once (the bastards).
It’s the lenght of time it’s been below freezing that’s really fecking things up. Even in areas that haven’t recieved a lot of snow. The frost turns to ice and the ice doesn’t go away. Then any small amount of rain, hail, sleet or snow will turn to ice aswell and very soon the roads are a nightmare. We had a bit of snow yesterday and it fecked up the whole city. All the roads where like an ice rink. Cars slipping and unable to get up hills etc. then blocked the roads futher. All the busses stopped and teh taxi drivers went home so a huge amount of people had to walk on paths that were ice covered. 100’s of people broke bones last night walking home.
Snow is bad but we over here are used to it going very soon and not lying on the ground for weeks. The gulf stream means that we have a very mild climate. Rarely gets too cold or too hot and when it does it doesn’t last. Lots of rain though. This cold snap is severe from our POV due it’'s lenght. Ireland and the UK just doesn’t have the infrastructure or the equipment (plows, snow tyres/chains) to deal with it.
The UK is completely white on satellite pictures right now.
It was Biggar where we had to seek refuge just before Christmas. You know the village of Coulter, just south of Biggar on the A702? There’s a very sharp turn over a bridge, and the road then rises up a small hill. No one could get up the hill - heavy snow and you couldn’t carry any momentum round the bend and up into the incline. Had to head back to Biggar - got the last hotel room as well.
I drove back up New Years Day and it was fine. Guess it depends if there is any more snow and whether the M74 keep getting gritted. There were people travelling north who’d laid up in Biggar that night - they’d spent 5 hours on the M74 from Moffat to Abbingdon - that’s one exit and about 20 miles! Good luck in any case - hope it doesn’t turn into too much of an adventure.
That’s rather beautiful, don’tcha think?
My car is stuck in my driveway still. And I can’t get to the shovel because it’s locked in the shed, which I discovered earlier is frozen shut.
Here are some British asshole drivers for your Schadenfreude purposes.
That’s a lovely photograph. Looks like all of the mainland is covered bar the Rhins peninsula.
Jesus wept!
One driver. Two idiots.
I just realised you can see the major cities - London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh in particular - by the greyness of the snow.
LMAO.
The greyness is due to the angle of the roofs reflecting less light, not the dirtier snow in the streets. Urban areas always look darker.
Ow, that’s painful to watch. What does Schadenfreude mean?
I take it, due to the rarity of the conditions, people don’t stock bags of salt for deicing their sidewalks? Probably isn’t even sold in stores there. I’ve still got 80 lbs left over from last year.
It’s a German word that means something like “taking pleasure in the misfortune of others”.
Thanks.
Yeah, I know that stretch well. It’s not a good drive even in good weather, as you invariably get stuck behind a lorry or slow driver, and there’s only two straight stretches on the 40 mile leg from Edinburgh to the M74! I’ve resigned myself to carrying on up to Glasgow and coming across the M8.
It is sold and some people do keep some stocks (we had a few bags), also there are big tubs with grit in on most roads. But round here I don’t see how it would have been possible to clear all the pavements or roads using it - houses are fairly spaced out, so clearly the pavements would have involved sweeping a foot of snow off the 100 feet of sidewalk around each house, then using whole bags of grit over the top of it, only for it to probably snow again.
In some areas with a lot of farms the roads are constantly pristine, because farmers raid the grit tubs and drive around every back road in tractors or land rovers gritting the roads. But there aren’t many farms where I live and no one has a tractor! How do you successfully grit the whole sidewalk over there? Just with a lot of work?
We use salt (versus grit) on the sidewalks in front of our houses after the snow is shoveled off. It’s not unusual to go through 80 lbs of salt at a time. In an area that gets enough snow to be difficult to shovel many people buy snow blowers. The last big snow we had here I bought one as a hedge against a heart attack. If it’s knee deep I’ll run it around my block and maybe part of the alley.
Related question: Are there many AWD or 4WD vehicles in the UK ? That is, something to get around well when it does eventually snow?
I love that I learned a new difference in cross-Atlantic English: gritter/gritting for sander/sanding.