It’s Snowmageddon time in the UK is anarchy far behind?
Is a British inch the same as an American inch?
No.
We revolted against that sometime in the mid-1700’s. 
An Imperial inch is 4.5 cm, while a US Customary inch is 3.8 cm.
Or is that gallons and litres?
4" a -mageddon?
Pshaw, I say.
Pip pip cheerio, and whatnot.
The Blitz was just one of those things you dealt with but a little snow has you all in a panic. Ya’ll gotten soft in your old age?
my snow-tire-shod 4x4 Ranger laughs at a foot of snow. Nevermind 2-4 inches.
Its up North. People up there are just wannabe jocks. If it ain’t the sarf east it don’t matter.
Meh, 4" is a flurry, here’s what we have in New England (Maine)
this was the day after the Feb. 2013 storm
That’s 3-4… FEET of snow, some drifts are topping 6+ feet
Inches…Feh…
But in England, the whole country grinds to a halt if a single snowflake drifts down anywhere south of Derbyshire…
What the fuck is wrong with those people?
In the US, totaling the cold fatalities in both 2012 and 2013, only 36 people died. Eighteen a year, not 30,000.
That’s a measly +5F–I don’t even button my coat for five lousy degrees! That article got me researching this because when I saw “Hospitals are expected to be flooded with people suffering from the cold, and the Office for National Statistics has predicted 3,000 deaths due to the cold in this week alone,” I thought it was a joke.
They aren’t prepared for it, and people don’t heat their damn houses. I visited my college roomie in Kent one year before Thanksgiving, and I could literally see my breath in their kitchen.
Yeah, while I’m a bit of an Anglophile, it does seem that the UK is very narrowly adapted for temperature and weather extremes, and craps out if the weather doesn’t stay in those boundaries.
I mean, the temps got into the lower 90s for about 2 weeks the summer I spent there, and you’d have thought the place was on the surface of the sun by the way people were acting.
Then, in 2010, they got a moderate to small amount of snow, and Heathrow completely shut down. This is in weather that O’Hare or Logan or Minneapolis would likely have powered through without cancelling many flights, yet Heathrow was entirely off-line for like a week for 4" of snow. And this is at an airport that if it’s not the most traveled airport in the world, it’s in the top 2-3.
What you have to grasp about the UK is that we are pretty much unique amongst major first world nations in not being at risk from major weather event or natural disasters.
It so rarely happens that the slightest uptick or downturn in temperature norms causes problems that, for other countries at more risk, would be unthinkable.
We don’t air-condition our homes because there is no real need outside of the very hottest months of the very hottest years.
Similarly our winter preparation is not so good because snow is rare enough (and minor enough) in most places to make it not worth while in keeping major infrastructure in place for snow clearing etc.
For example, in my >25 years of adult life in the UK I have had to shovel my pathways of snow exactly 3 times. (that’s three times total not three winters) and I have lived in both the North-east and South-east during that time.
I have had snow tyres for my car only for the last 4 years and that is only because it is a legal requirement when I drive through Germany and Austria in winter.
They’re poor, elderly, maybe living rough, mentally or physically ill-equipped or otherwise vulnerable.
It’s likely not so much what’s wrong with them, as what’s wrong with whatever the systems are that should be caring for them.
I’ve just watched the BBC weather. Apparently, it’s only the south of England that’s going to be affected. We in Scotland, even on the East coast, are going to benefit from air warmed by the Atlantic.
South London had about 2mm, with drifts of up to 5mm in mountainous areas 50cm or more above sea-level.
Snowpocalypse! Snowvalanche! Snownado! Snownami!
Save yourselves! Run! Run for your very lives!
I am just going outside and may be some time.
Something else to point out. In the mornings, the temperature is hovering around zero. That makes for treacherous conditions, because some places will be icy and others will not and there will be random transitions.