Why Can't We Cope With The Weather?

[anotheoldgit]

How is is that in this day and age we get a little wintry weather and it brings almost everything to a stand still?

I am old enough to remember the winter of 1947, and for those who cannot remember that far back, here is what it was like.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=snow+in+1947&biw=1024&;bih=611&tbm=isch&tbo=u&;source=univ&sa=X&sqi=2&;ved=0ahUKEwirutG8_b7RAhVIJcAKHWrEBhEQsAQITw

[anotheoldgit]

Forgot the main link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4116422/Warnings-snow-storm-London-mocked-Twitter.html

[EDDIE51]

^ damned if they do damned if they don't!
If they had not issued a warning and we had heavy snow , there would be even more complaints.

[jno]

no standstill round here. But if you're thinking of villages being evacuated in Norfolk, remember that the east coast generally is tilting down further into the sea all the time, so all such places are at some risk. (Conversely, the highlands are getting higher.)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/6226537/England-is-sinking-while-Scotland-rises-above-sea-levels-according-to-new-study.html

[ummmm]

Wow...my parents weren't even alive in '47.

[dannyk13]

I remember it well, especially the long walk to school and back.

[rockyroad]

Peoples lives are busier than in 1947, people can't afford to be snowed in. Those storms were freak storms, I think there was one in the sixties my OH remembers being in hospital and not seeing his parents for four days because they were snowed in and when he got home the snow was up to his bedroom window.

[andy-hughes]

In one word - unpredictability.

Countries where bad weather is guaranteed enjoy the luxury of proper preparations and populations who grow up with winter as an accepted part of life, so they simply get on with it.

Our weather cannot be guaranteed, so it is not financially feasible to invest in expensive equipment which may sit idle for four winters out of ten.

So we have occasional freak snow storms that arrive with little warning - it's difficult to predict weather changes accurately over a small island like ours.

Culturally, we act as though snow in winter is completely unexpected.

Our fragile road systems clog instantly, our drivers, many of whom have not driven in snow before, slip and slide all over the place and crash into each other causing mayhem.

Our news services act like snow is an invasion from Mars, and send reporters to stand in it and report it live on news programmes like it is a unique event.

These are just some of the reasons why everyone treats the first show of winter like it is something of which they have no comprehension - like today.

[bhg481]

I think that sums it up, danny. Most of us lived within walking distance of school/work because few people had cars, certainly in my part of the world. If the weather was really bad the only pupils who couldn't get to school were the ones who lived on farms on the fells.

[dannyk13]

bhg, my walking distance to school was over 2 miles.

[jno]

it is not financially feasible to invest in expensive equipment which may sit idle for four winters out of ten.

even more so for London Underground, who are criticised every time the tubes stop for snow. But snow equipment might be used one day a year and often not even that. (I think it's been three years since we last had any.)

[Fitzer]

And even those countries that experience heavy snow regularly still have problems :-)
http://newsandbusiness.rogersdigitalmedia.com.edgesuite.net/videos/13639244001/201612/2850/13639244001_5238239279001_5238231028001.mp4

[Baldric]

'63 is the last really bad Winter I remember, I was 12. We lived in Berkshire, the bit that is now Oxfordshire, at the foot of the Berkshire Downs a 700 feet descent in about ¾ of a mile, everything that come over the top of the Downs got dumped on us big-time due to change in pressure. We were about a mile out of Town and were snowed in for 3 or 4 days and when they did open the road it was single track with about 6ft of snow either side.
Happy days.

[ladybirder]

Danny you were lucky to be able to walk to school (or maybe not). I couldn't go because the snow was too deep for me to walk in. My lucky father was in Australia that winter on business and so missed all the fun.

[bhg481]

I was about a mile and a half from school, danny; in those days you could cycle to school and not have your bike pinched. Great fun in the bad winter of 1963.

[naomi24]

aog, looking at those buses and cars in the pictures, it seems they didn't cope any better then than we do now.

[dannyk13]

One thing I remember was and seeing lorry-loads of workers with shovels whose job it was to clear the roads first and he the pavements. I believe that they were unemployed hired on a temporary basis.

[anotheoldgit]

In 1947 we even had German Prisoners of War helping to clear the snow.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01787/1947-pows_1787827i.jpg

[Cloverjo]

I saw warnings for people in a village in Essex to evacuate. Did anything terrible happen there? I haven't seen anything on the news today.

[anotheoldgit]

naomi24

/// aog, looking at those buses and cars in the pictures, it seems they didn't cope any better then than we do now. ///

We haven't had that amount of snow, at least in those days they did try to carry on, I doubt if they would even leave the garage these days.

[Zacs-Master]

I was just thinking that Naomi. AOG seems to have posted a thread criticising how everything comes to a standstill contrasted with a picture of happier times......when things came to a standstill.

Having said that, people have no idea how to drive in adverse conditions these days. being over cautious if anything.