Things are bad in old Blighty
Dec 4th 2010, 2:24 pm
#46
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Joined: Nov 2002
Location: Where bad things rarely happen in movies
Posts: 8,933
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
I know its cool to knock the UK when it suffers from the weather, but to add a little transatlantic context, this "devastating blizzard" and the ensuing "arctic conditions" closed roads, downed power lines, caused umpteen pileups on the highways and earned our kids a snow day a year ago today.......
Buggered up my newplantings too.......
Buggered up my newplantings too.......
Dec 4th 2010, 2:36 pm
#47
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 7,605
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
I know its cool to knock the UK when it suffers from the weather, but to add a little transatlantic context, this "devastating blizzard" and the ensuing "arctic conditions" closed roads, downed power lines, caused umpteen pileups on the highways and earned our kids a snow day a year ago today.......
I remember that. I don't think you're allowed to be a newsreader in TX unless you scream hysterically about everything as if it's the end of the world.
Dec 4th 2010, 4:18 pm
#48
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2010
Location: Sammamish, WA
Posts: 300
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
There wasn't enough snow to close Manchester Airport on Wednesday unfortunately. My inlaws still managed to get here 
Dec 5th 2010, 1:19 am
#49
Taunton, Somerset to PA
Joined: Sep 2004
Location: Pittsburgh PA
Posts: 196
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
Its the simple fact that in the Uk where I lived (Somerset) there were not enough plow and gritting trucks, around here (Pennsylvania) where we get snow every year we have lots of trucks ready to deal with it.
Dec 5th 2010, 1:28 am
#50
Sursum corda
Joined: Sep 2002
Location: Richmond Hill, GA USA
Posts: 38,860
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
I remember an Xmas in VT, when we got 18 inches Xmas Eve and by 8 am Xmas Day, the roads were clear (dirt roads at that!);BUT if we got even 4 inches where I live in GA, they would and did (in 1989) close I-95.
Dec 5th 2010, 11:39 am
#51
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2002
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 556
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
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.
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.
The winter of 62/63 was my last in the UK ( place called Barton in the Clay Beds). Even with central heating our pipes froze and that tank in the attic that fed the hot water tank had 1/2inch of ice that had to be broken every morning. We were cut of for three days, they had to dig their way through the country lane that had high banks on both sides.
In Feb 63 I answered an add in the Sunday Telegraph for a job in Ottawa Canada and have never left. In my 47 years here I was never unable to get into work because of snow. But then we have an enormous amount of equipment and roads built to take heavy snow falls.
Dec 6th 2010, 5:01 am
#52
Instigator of the Post
Joined: May 2008
Location: Nashville, TN
Posts: 501
Re: Things are bad in old Blighty
I know its cool to knock the UK when it suffers from the weather, but to add a little transatlantic context, this "devastating blizzard" and the ensuing "arctic conditions" closed roads, downed power lines, caused umpteen pileups on the highways and earned our kids a snow day a year ago today.......
Attachment 97461
Buggered up my newplantings too.......
Attachment 97461
Buggered up my newplantings too.......
We suffer from the same affliction of believing a dusting of snow is a snowstorm.I'm from Iowa originally so I find it quite funny, as does the hubster.
