An Extreme Weather Event…
Posted by gkcct on February 4, 2009
…or How London Came To A Grinding Halt.
Step 1: Forecast heavy snow for two days. Watch as some people act like the armageddon is coming. Watch as others treat it like another erroneous forecast from the Met Office. They are famous, after all, for issuing forecasts like ‘Bright and sunny with some cloud and some rain. Generally fine.’
Step 2: Witness large clumps of snow falling from the sky. The ground is lightly covered with white flecks. Canadians call this a mere dusting and get on with things. Britons say, ‘Wow, it’s really coming down hard!’ They walk around with heavy parkas and umbrellas. Umbrellas?!
Step 3: Wake up, look outside, and see snow everywhere. About 10cm of it. It’s eerily silent. Turn on the radio or the TV. All you hear about is the snow. There is no other news. Major roads like the M25 are backed up for 7 miles or more. Schools across the nation are shut. Trains cease to operate. London buses – yes, those large, red, double-decker things – are no longer running. The London Underground suspends most of its trains. My first question…isn’t the Underground, well, UNDER the ground? Turns out that it’s also partially ABOVE ground. If falling leaves can cause delays on the Underground, imagine what snow can do. And here’s just how much snow fell in this great city:
Outside our front door
Step 4: Turn on your computer and receive a flurry of emails from the university telling people to go home, or not to come in at all. Libraries are closed. Cafeterias across campus are closed because no groceries were delivered. The M25 is still backed up. London has become a ghost-town.
Step 5: Laugh, I mean, really LAUGH, when the BBC weather woman says that with the wind chill, the temperature in London will be a BITTERLY COLD -5C!! Yes, that’s right. It was bitterly cold. HA HA HA HA…sorry…
Step 6: Think back to the great snow storm of 1999 in Toronto when they called in the army to help dig themselves out. The rest of Canada laughed and mocked Torontonians. Then again, they did have over 80cm of snow. London had 15cm at the most. This city, however, appears to have few snow plows. And despite the repeated forecast, sanding of roads appears to be a slow process. A BBC radio announcer on Day 2 of the Extreme Weather Event, in response to the wide-spread criticism about London’s lack of preparedness for the snow, says, ‘It is not beyond the wit of man to put grit on the roads.’ Only on the BBC…
Step 7: If there’s snow, then what choice do 
you have, but to play in it?! Here’s what we did in the London Snow Storm of 2009:
