See how us Londoners cope with driving in 2-3 inches of snow
While I do have to say I find it somewhat amusing (no street clearance? Where are the snow plows?), I do know that if you are not used to driving in it, snow can be a bitch.
It looks a right mess, to borrow a Brit idiom. Good luck and yay for no school!
(and at least the Tube still works, no?).
Well, I don’t work Mondays so I have tomorrow off whatever. There’s currently about 3 inches of snow here, with a further 3-4 inches possible tomorrow, which would make it the deepest since 1991 I believe.
Snowploughs? A rarity. Back in the old days we used to have them but snow is so rare these days that lots of councils no longer have them. The roads were gritted but the snow came down so heavily that it overwhelmed the grit.
All buses in London have been cancelled tonight, don’t know if they will be working tomorrow.
My wife is a schoolteacher, I suspect she will have a day off tomorrow!
(PS I like to think I can drive better in snow than the people in the clip, I get a bit more practice as I go skiing in Europe quite a bit)
My parents are fairly near DC and people there always freak right out when it snows, even though it snows at least once or twice every year. I bet I could get around fine with my perfectly legal-where-I-live studded snow tires, though. I adore my snow tires. Without them, here, I’d be screwed.
This is my second winter as an adult in a place where snow is normal. We got nearly two feet of snow in one storm and I managed to get to work for a few hours that very day. This is because a) I needed the money and b) there is serious snow moving equipment around here; they plow my street with a large bulldozer!
If you’re not used to it and nobody has the proper equipment to deal with it, snow is a bitch to get around in. I won’t laugh too much, because I’ve been there.
It’s 2.40am and I’m still up, just watching the snow falling gently outside my window. It’s a sight I never tire of (although I appreciate that is only due to its rarity - if I lived somewhere that got 4 months of the stuff each year I would probably feel differently!)
I suspect that snow tires are uncommon in London (England, that is, not Ontario).
Yes, snow removal is what a lot of construction equipment around here does during the winter. Motor graders are a favourite. And there’s a secondary removal of piled snow to dumping grounds. More than once I’ve been woken by bellowing diesel engines.
:: nods ::
I will - HA ha! In your face, people who don’t have cold, six month long winters like we do!
Oh, alright, yeah, it would suck to have weather you’re not used to and aren’t prepared for. We’d all lose our minds here, too, if we ever had a hurricane or eathquake or tsunami.
Yep, I wouldn’t expect Londoners to have snow tires, from what I know. I never owned them before I moved here last year.
I remember having snow days when I was in Georgia, but here, I think they laugh at the concept. Though I was snowed in that day we got two feet until the street got plowed.
This Southern (U.S) boy is not amused by excessive amounts of snow atypical for the region. We are having a terrible winter across much of the Northern U.S. and I am fed up by it. I drive an SUV so I can get around in almost any conditions but that doesn’t make it right. If it happens again, I plan to blow something up even if it is just a small tree on the periphery of a playground at 2 am. I can’t take this shit anymore. For all the dickheads that promised Global Warming would bring sweet relief, I say fuck you and feed us another lie. I haven’t seen any rising sea levels yet like I wanted.
I don’t have studded tires, or even snow tires, and I drive through Wisconsin snow every year and don’t have those kinds of problems in twice the snow.
Do tires in England even have treads?
Is your car front wheel drive? It looked like most, or maybe all, of the ones in the video were rear wheel drive. That makes a big difference.
true, if you are a novice. I actually prefer rwd for winter driving for the same reasons I prefer it the rest of the time, better control.
note this only works if you are an experienced snow driver, if you are inexperienced stay the hell home where you belong.
Hah! I wish! (he says bitterly).
The only Tube line unaffected by the snow at the moment is the Victoria, which is entirely underground, and a long way underground at that.
The other lines:
Bakerloo: Part suspended
Central: Severe delays
Circle: Suspended
District: Part suspended
Hammersmith and City: Suspended
Jubilee: Part suspended
Metropolitan: Part suspended
Northern: Part suspended
Piccadilly: Part suspended
Even the inky-dink Waterloo & City is suspended, and it has a total of two stops on the entire line. Clearly in London we manage to have snow underground; what will they think of next, eh?
Oh, and all buses in London have been taken off the roads. I’m not getting into work today.
OMG the sky is falling - literally! White stuff is coming out of it! Help!
:runs around screaming:
Trains on the Great Western Line are stopping at Reading.
There’s about a 1/2" of snow here. FFS.
To be fair, there is now 5-6 inches of snow widely around London.
My wife’s school is shut. We’re off sledging 
Still, it looks like the tires weren’t that grreat. Back when I had a rwd Caprice I’ve driven through much worse snow without any big problems. I just had good tires.
Yes, of course. We may not get much snow nowadays, but we still get plenty of rain. I can’t imagine anywhere you’d get slicks as a matter of course - Dubai maybe?
I was meant to be working from home in any case today, while some nice men came to deliver the new front door we wanted to keep out the cold. They haven’t called yet, but my suspicion is that we cut this one a little too fine. The good news is my wife is also working from home now, which is just terribly cosy. Outside, kids alternate between laughing merrily (because they’ve just dumped a fistful of snow down the back of their friend’s jacket) and crying wretchedly (because their friend has just dumped a fistful of snow down the back of their jacket). I love winter.
So, we can’t get to work on a Monday. Oh noes!
Both of the lines I use to get to work (overground) are completely suspended, haha.
Quite simply, I don’t care, my school’s closed today and that’s all that matters 
Snow tyres? Forget it - there’s not exactly much point, for one day of snow every couple of years. Snowploughs? They have had them out in a few areas around here, more to deal with drifts than general accumulation, and given that the ploughs are mounted onto the front of the regular gritting truck, their more widespread absence is evidence that they wouldn’t do anything useful. I think a big problem in places such as in that video was the small amounts of snow which fell yesterday, partially melted and then refroze.
I was amused, though, to see a TV reporter valiantly trying to do a piece to camera about the refinery strikes, depite being pelted with snowballs by the strikers 
Ha! I grew up in Dallas, TX, where it ices over about once every ten years–not often enough for people to learn how to drive on the stuff, and not often enough to justify the expense of the City of Dallas buying snow removal equipment. So when it happens it is an unmitigated disaster–legions of stranded, helpless motorists, cars sliding off the road, into each other, etc. The entire city shuts down. There is frantic, live, non-stop news coverage of bridges upon which 1/2" of snow has accumulated, and in general a spectacle which would make any seasoned Northerner fall out of his chair helpless with mirth.