chartreuse

I think that's the problem, on both sides of the pond. Weather that would have been dealt with as a matter of course a decade or two ago now results in chaos. Not because the weather is any different, but because the feckwits who are in charge of dealing with it have flogged off all the equipment, made everybody who knew what they were doing redundant, and spent all the money on conciousness raising seminars in exotic locations.

Jerseygirl

It's a wise thing to do with British houses...water tanks upstairs and water feed radiators. We had a burst pipe in our loft one Christmas when we were in Orlando. Our neighbour noticed water coming out of the front door.

We passed that way a couple of days ago. Syracuse gets worse weather than Buffalo...it gets more of the lake effect snow.

Cape Blue

Really - I remember people grumbling about mis-management and snow on the rails (or leaves), not enough gritting lorries etc at least 30 years ago.

MrEmjoy

The main problem with the UK is it's not very flat in the worst affected areas. People used to get about more on foot as well. And also I feel people have forgotten how to cope on their own, as soon as they are made to do much on their own they fart, collapse and blame the government for not helping them.

Also the sheer volume of snow and record low temps together haven't been seen in the UK since the 1960's. But fewer and fewer people will want to stand on their own two and get on with helping themselves.

MrEmjoy

Aye, I was watching the radars for those areas and it was really piling up coming off of the lakes!

We get shafted when the winds come towards the west, the snow can dump down a few inches an hour! Thankfully its rare and normally Indiana and Michigan gets it!

chartreuse

Fair point, 10 years was probably a bit optimistic (about my age if nothing else) but it's certainly true that if you go back a quarter century things functioned (albeit while we enjoyed a grumble) and the country didn't shut down.

This is also true, although I'm dubious about the "record" bit. Seems like everything's a record something, these days, especially when things go tits up and somebody needs an excuse.

MrEmjoy

Don't be, look at the met office website I'm sure they aren't going to make it up. My dad remembers the snow in Bradford, Birkenshaw to be precise drifting over 20ft. It's not the flattest part of the world either but people coped. For me I can't comprehend 20ft of snow, I guess that's why Englands having such a hard time dealing with it.

Last year I said, "Next year there will be no excuse for not coping" well I guess the sheer volume in snow is a good excuse but NEXT year it has to be even worse or there will be no good reason!

I'd love to write to the transport department with some good suggestions other than the "It's not good enough" complaints I keep hearing.

Designated snow routes would be a good start! No parking over 3 inch of snow and they take the main brunt of the gritting and plowing.

Thydney

We've had a bit of a dusting other than that just cold

Brit3964

It's good to know the emergency services are working in UK. I guess somebody should have told this woman what 999 is really for. At least she didn't get served with the wrong McD's order

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-11908583

Lothianlad

A few inches of snow.....hmmmmm......I put on my wellies and waded out into the back garden and stuck a measuring tape down into the most level looking part of the snow cover.....it sank down into the snow until it would not go any lower and the scale read 33cms of the white stuff....in Imperial America that would measure almost 13 inches. Against a fence it worked out at 46cms - 18 inches. Maybe by American standards that is a "few" inches but hereabouts in the western suburbs of Edinburgh, Scotland, it's a wee bit of a lot. My dog George quite likes the stuff and I can always tell whereabouts in the garden he has cocked his leg.

Today is the first in eleven days that the temperature has risen above feeezing point here - currently it stands at a positively sweltering +1.2C and the air flow as swung round to the south west but this relief is only temporary according to the local weather gurus - the freezing weather promises to return on Sunday night/Monday morning and will probably last for the whole of next week. Oh joy!

There have been tragedies - in one place in Cumbria, England two pensioners were found dead in the snow in their garden - I don't know the exact circumstances but I gater they died of hypothermia.

Of course the UK always get's caught on the hop whenever severe weather (severe by British standards and this time it really has been severe) hits us. We had plenty of warning from the Met Office but still the authorities seem to be "unprepared" for it, and Health and Safety wimpishness comes into play on a grand scale - schools close down, people cop out of going to work, and train and bus timetables become pure fiction. But seriously, in all fairness, getting about in all this sh*t this time round really hasn't been a picnic even for the most able bodied of us, on foot or behind the wheel.

But it isn't just us Brits who have witnessed widespread disruption. According to one the the UK's national newspapers today 04/12 (and no, it wasn't the Daily Mail!) other Northern European countries similarly affected by adverse severe winter weather conditions have been scenes of chaos made up of blocked roads, non operational airports, cancelled train services and road transport and disruption of public services. Actually I found all that quite a relief to know that it only isn't us Brits who are f*****g useless at coping with a real winter.

Anyway, I'm quite enjoying today's (seemingly temporary) "heatwave". It actually rained a wee bit earlier on this morning.

Of course, as the very oldest people never fail to rmind us youngers, that winters really were winters in the past. I have checked records and read books and articles.

In 1947 the whole of the UK was buried under deep snow from mid January to the middle of March continuously, with snow drifs reaching up to the roof tops in many areas. It was a time of severe fuel and power shortages, strict food rationing, and very few people had their own transport. Temperatures remained below freezing for weeks on end and power cuts were frequent. There was no social security then as we know it today - no winter fuel payments for pensioners or cold weather payments for poorer people. Rivers froze from bank to bank and ice floes became blocked beow Tower Bridge in London.

On 22 December 1962 bitterly cold easterly winds swept in from Northern Russia and stayed....for almost three months. On Boxing Day 1962 the snows arrived and even if a day late it remained deep and crisp an even....for almost three months. On 29/30 December 1962 a snow blizzard paralysed much of southern Britain and, as the late comedian Kenneth Williams says in his famous diaries, published in book form by Russell Davies: "Snow lies over a foot deep with deeper drifts in central London but still the London buses are running -the London bus drivers are "wonderful - all of them!"

The snow and the bitter cold persisted until the first week of March 1963. The sea froze for a mile or more out from the shore in many places - at Ramsgate in Kent the harbour was frozen over and a car drove across the River Dee, from bank to bank, at Chester. At Cambridge students took a short cut to their various colleges by walking along the frozen River Cam.

If any such winters occurred in the UK again, a country now vastly different in so many ways to what it was in either 1947 or 1963, the chaos and economic damage would be almost unimaginable. Let's hope it won't happen now - after all, we've just experienced the coldest November weather ever recorded in the UK.

cindyabs

As always it's the OAP, whether here or in the UK that have the toughest time.

We've had problems in the US in some parts, with heatwaves, equally deadly for the OAP that are economically challenged.

Thydney

There have been a couple of deaths this week old people fallen over in their yards and died of the cold

Steerpike

I'll forgive the daily mail reference since they are GREAT pictures! That's about as close to snow I want to get! Great to look at from afar!

joto

FIL and SMIL got help from her son in a 4x4 to get to Tesco and they live in Edinburgh because the council still haven't been round to clear their road. DH's aunt died about 10 days ago and they still haven't been able to get her buried, because they can't get her to Edinburgh because of the bad roads. It's sad for her family that they can't move on yet.

Brat1

Sorry, I'll try again!!!