The End is Nigh

You could be forgiven for believing that if you listened to the media hysteria about yesterday's weather.

We had some snow.

London's transport infrastructure was severely disrupted for most of the morning.
The media were advising people to take extreme care getting to work/school, and some radio stations were advising people to stay at home.

In my corner of SW Greater London, we had 3-4 inches of snow. I admit that the 10 yards from my front door to the car was somewhat treacherous: my shoes got a bit wet, and shock-horror, I had to don a pair of Wellington boots.

Equally the 200 yards to the main road was rather scary: I had to keep at an ever-so-sensible 5mph, and wheel-spinning, tyre-smoking speed-starts and hand-brake turns were completely off my driving menu.

But the main roads (all of them) were clear of snow, thanks to gritting through out the night. Even the traffic was lighter than usual, but that could have been because I left 30 minutes earlier than usual.

So what was the panic about? It's not like we don't get snow in the UK.

How is it that a few inches of snow in the UK is enough to induce such an extreme reaction in the media, and such distruption to the capital's transport infrastructure, while North America, Canada, and Central and Northen Europe deal with several feet of snow without such hysterics?

OK so maybe other countries are geared-up for regular major snowfalls. Is it really so hard / expensive for the UK to be ready for a few inches of snow every so often?

Or is it more a kind of nation-wide denial that is at fault: we don't get heavy snow every year, so we'll just deny that we get any snow ever, and then panic when we do.

After all by elevating a moderately light snow-fall to the realms of some kind of minor natural disaster, the population is distracted from thinking about the man-made problems that we are failing to deal with.