White stuff

As I write this, southern England has had two periods of snow already, with more forecast in the next few days. Scotland and northern England have had much more snow. And it's not even Christmas yet!

We had some snow in Basingstoke last weekend - Saturday morning to be precise. It was falling down hard but stopped in the afternoon. The accumulation must be about 6 inches - what an average Bostonian calls a "dusting". There was some snow Monday night, maybe an inch of snow. It has been cold, a little less than 0C, but it was not that bad. The snow and freezing temperatures have caused much misery, as I describe below.

Flights from all the airports, including the major one, Heathrow, have been cancelled or delayed since Saturday. As you see in the TV, thousands of passengers have been camping out in the airport, in the hopes of getting to some place before Christmas. We had a holiday party at my work on Friday. Few of my colleagues flew from US to attend it and were supposed to fly back over the weekend, but haven't. Not to be left behind, train travel has been affected too. My daily commute to London has become a pain, with frequency of trains reduced to half, trains getting overcrowded (sometimes there is not even a place to stand) and journeys taking longer stopping at all the stations in between. Looks like they are gritting the main roads, but they are hardly in drivable condition. All this for few inches of snow!

The reason for the disruption is the country is not prepared to handle the snow. The reason for being unprepared is that they are not used to getting snow. Actually they have been getting snow for the past three years, but did not get any for about ten years before that. So you can say they have been warned for three years. Being prepared costs money in terms of materials, equipment, storage and labour, but the cost of all this havoc is much much higher. Hope they learn the lesson and be prepared next year. One can always hope!

As you may expect, I have been eagerly checking the weather in Boston. At last my prayers have been answered (I was only wishing for a white Christmas for Boston) and the north east is finally getting some snow. When we moved out of Boston, we thought we were getting away from all the cold and snow, but we have been cheated. The next time we move, we should find a place where people can handle the white stuff a little better.