To tell everyone to calm the fuck down?

[MumboJumboo]

This is all the snow where I live and everyone’s got their knickers in a twist! Talks of possible school closures and one of the departments in my husbands work have been told to take Friday off because of the “adverse weather” 😂😂😂

Please try to post a photo tomorrow.

YABU, but you can have the last laugh tomorrow if we don’t get a decent amount of snow.

I’ve lived in places where it snows a good 7 months of the year. I LOVE snow and I miss it, I’ve been really happy today, crunching over fields and marvelling at the beauty of it all, despite only getting a small amount of snow. It was a bit funny when the neighbour was talking about having to ‘dig his car out’ when there was a light powder on the top of it and honestly less than an inch on the ground 🤣 but to save him this onerous task, I brought some shopping home for him. As well as for another neighbour & my elderly aunt.

Our schools have decided to close tomorrow & Friday. They took that decision because they’re (private) city schools & all but a handful of the 1400 kids are transported and they don’t want any of the children in unavoidable accidents or even just stuck, freezing cold, in queues for hours. They also want to reduce the amount of traffic going into the city & out again, thus reducing the difficulty for OTHER people.

Currently there’s about 8 flakes in the school parking area, but I’m not such a twat that I can’t foresee it being very different over the next few days. I’m glad they decided today and I’m not slightly bothered if they’ve been too hasty and we don’t get much snow.

We have food in & I don’t plan to add to the chaos on the roads. I’m used to driving in snow & ice, my family, friends & neighbours know this and I’ll happily drive them if they need to go anywhere, but we aren’t going out in the car ‘for fun’.

Planning to keep people safe isn’t hysteria.

We don’t cope as well as other places and things do grind to a halt, but that’s because for the rare occasion we do get snow, it’s not worth spending tons on machinery etc.

Where I live, this is the level of snow..but loads called in to say they were unable to make it in to the office.

The beast from the east has just left only a small deposit in Crawley it seems but its is still bloomin freezing! Plus down the road in East Grinstead they had loads of snow.

Brr that was very well said about infrastructure - I'm getting really annoyed at people complaining about roads/trains being closed etc. They would be the first to complain if more was spent for using two days a year. I think gritters etc are doing as great job.

There's places (not drifts) where it's up above wellies here. Taking my dog out this morning we got caught in a white out - very very cold and easy to get lost (i was with my mum who was getting landmarks mixed up and walking the wrong way). We were well wrapped up but still very glad to get in. It is dangerous and will be worse tomorrow when the snoiw is even more compacted and turned to smooth ice. It was hard enough today with grippers (I also saw a 4x4 with a smug, "fear me winter" owner having wheel spin and polishing the road). We are in an amber area.

For any fellow weather geeks out there, if you check the "rainfall" radar, there's a lovely A30 convergence line through central Somerset and Devon at the moment.

Someone upthread said something along the lines of it was an amber alert with a only 40% chance of snow - the colour scale is a measure of risk i.e. probability of the event happening multiplied by severity of the outcome if it does happen.

Couple of inches of snow and a cold snap and it's chaos everywhere.
Just do your job and get the bloody trains running. How does every other country manage?

In countries where they get snow every winter, they have the equipment, staff etc to deal with it. In the south of England, councils can't justify spending hundreds of thousands on gritters, snowploughs etc for an event that only happens for a couple of days at intervals of several years. Yesterday was the first time snow settled here since 2010.

Below -5 is such a rare event here that the county council only buy salt that works down to that temperature. If it falls to -8, they may as well have not bothered gritting the roads. They haven't got enough gritting lorries to do all the bus routes, so we don't get any buses and have to take our chances walking the best part of a mile down a very steep hill to access the bus routes on the main road. And because we're high up, we get more snow and colder temperatures than anywhere else in town!

It's different if you live up in the Pennines or something, where snow is a regular winter event. Local authorities in those areas can justify investing in stuff to deal with snow, and they get extra money in their central government grant because of it. If it wasn't for a small area in the High Weald, East Sussex wouldn't get any snow money at all!

op.
i LOVE YOUR thread.
that's all.

But there was no snow when the trains were cancelled yesterday. There was no snow on the line today. Still no trains.

There was nothing to manage. The signal failures are a year round event.

If we had snow then of course they have to keep everybody safe, but they seem to cancel everything "just in case".

We had a flurry of snow at lunch time, which didn’t stick on the gritted roads and turned to slush and drained away quickly from untreated roads, cue much panic across the town about imminent school closures, food shortages, traffic problems. One woman even put on fb that they were shutting one of the schools and we were all to go and collect our dc immediately (I didn’t pay any attention). What school had actually said was if you wanted to collect your dc early because you were concerned about the weather (catchment includes a small minority of rural pupils) that was fine. Not that those who live a 5 minute walk away needed to collected.

Great if you're walking distance from shops. How are they getting deliveries?*

• I'm not advocating panic buying. Just saying it's not as simple as people are making out.

OP you're not wrong! We make such a fuss here.

We've just come back from Norway and everyone just gets on with it there. People were just digging themselves out and driving to work (slowly). Everyone drives slowly!

Workers were laying underground cables in heavy snow for 12 hours. They had to keep moving the snow out of the way as it fell but they carried on! Felt bad watching them through the window!

I will never complain about a little bit of snow again

The OP is talking about Friday though, not now. When severe disruption, in a country where this weather is so rare that investment in snow infrastructure is low, is likely to happen.

Red zone here. Lots of snow. I love 7 miles out of the capital of Scotland and it took done people three hours to travel that. Buses are off, trains are off, schools are shut, DH is working from home and my children have cabin fever already!

Do post a photo tomorrow afternoon, won't you OP.

Enjoy!

I'm in the Pennines, we are used to snow but I am not calm OP. My DS is working on late shift, new job so doesn't want to ask to leave early. Snow, ice, experienced drivers having problems. So no, not calm and no your post is not 'obvious that its tongue in cheek'.

Disclaimer- I normally have a SOH but heart is in mouth at moment.

We are snowed in in rural Northumberland. Quite calm about it though...

I can’t beleive the utter delusions of peoples comments I’ve read on social media the past 48 hours

We live in the NE, red weather warning, horrendous weather, 98% of schools closed, all non essential services been advised to go home, grit teams are working 12 hour shifts on rotation so 24 hours since Monday focusing on A roads, and some B roads, due to excessive snow from A roads, so priority services can be accessed (hospitals, police and fire etc...)

Waste services have been cancelled so bin men can shovel essential paths, roads, and streets that are badly affected etc...

People are honestly kicking up mass fuss because they now have to store extra waste bags... which will be collected on next pick up, (clearly stated in the announcements) until the service can be safely up and running,

grits truck are struggling with the downfall, trucks are overturned, stuck, some are getting police escorts!!!!

People are kicking off because residential areas are not being gritted.... and they can’t get there bin out!!!!

emergency services are working 24/7 - some staff are sleeping in the hospitals, staff are still trying to get out to emergency call outs etc... (Telecare, heating repairs, loss of power etc)

Yesterday in Newcastle a huge underground fire which cut the power of 500 properties and people abusing emergency service staff because they had no power... when the whole grid was down. Buses drivers being abused because they were late... on gridlocked roads...

When I was growing up in Scotland, we shovelled our streets, we used 20p table salt, we helped neighbours, we even had them in our house etc... we didn’t complain that our bins weren’t emptied as common sense is telling us staff will be prioritising services for those in NEED, where there is risk to life and property.

We helped our community, we helped emergency services, we used our intellect, but nope in this day and age it’s all about entitlement and “what do I pay my council tax for”

I’m honestly disgusted!

I'm with you OP. Southampton schools are starting to close, we have no snow left after the 5 minutes that fell on Tuesday and only a 35% chance of snow tomorrow. Very silly.

I do agree that some people are being utterly ridiculous though. There’s a lot of panic buying of bread & milk etc. It’s madness because it’s going to rain over the weekend, people only need enough in for a few days, not to see them through until Easter 🤣

Relative hospitalised through car accident on snowy rural road so no I won't calm down thanks

I am Highlander and we’ll used to snow. I honestly dint understand why places can come to a complete standstill over a bit if snow. Ours schools normally still open, people go to work, nobody panic buys and we just get in with it as it’s part of normal life for us I guess. I remember trudging through snow up to my knees as a teenager to get to school which finally closed weeks later when it had snowed so much the roof collapsed.

We haven't had any proper snow here (Wiltshire) for 5 years, the odd flurry very occasionally. Councils can not justify spending money on equipment and resources for such rare events.

So we get warnings and a couple of days at home because they don't have the resources to guarantee people's safety. It's not the end of the world.

And having so little experience of driving in snow and ice - because I've never had to - means I would much rather stay home than 'brave' it

We have quite a bit here the last couple of days, yesterday some cleared then lasy night the ground turned to sheet ice with snow on top and it has been snowing most of the day. We live at the top over of a large hill and cars can't get any grip so are just sliding until the driver decides to give up.
I am worried about my husband heading to work in the morning, he leaves at about 5am.

Portia 💐. I hope they’re ok. Let us know when you know.

Hep. What time is DS due home?

There was a guy on the radio this afternoon, he’d shut his business today (restaurant) and was out there with his monster vehicle towing people out of ditches and other places. He was having a blast and helping people - win/win 🍔🍺

I can’t believe some of you are comparing areas that already have had a high snow fall with where the op lives. The op has no snow and yet her dh has been given Friday off because of the bad weather. Just becasue snow is forecast, does not mean it will snow. We were told to prepare to wake up to heavy snow this morning and I woke to a frost (and not a heavy one). Someone upthread has commented to say today’s trains were cancelled yesterday because of the snow and it didn’t snow, but still no snow. That is ridiculous! And how anyone can argue that it’s not is beyond me!

We've got folk pooling 4x4s to get nurses to work in the morning, at least a sense of community is the good thing about all this

Thanks Annie