Britain stands still

K

Kopfanatic

Trooper
All you Canadians,Americans, Finns etc must be laughing your heads off at Britains pathetic attempts to cope with the current snow storms.No buses running in London, the underground shut(I didn't know it snowed underground).All the schools shut in Birmingham even though there was hardly any snow there at all.

I can't believe how much this country is going downhill.
 
I find it pretty funny.  But in the USA, it's the same in Atlanta, or Texas, whenever they get a couple inches.  It's all what you're used to, I suppose.
 
Exactly, if people don't know how to deal with those conditions why even put them at risk? I doubt Texans know about "black Ice."
 
See, that's the thing. In Germany, people know about black ice. There are specific warning signs for that. And you know when to expect it. It's not like meteorology is astrology. All you have to do is listen to the weather forecast. If the announcer says "beware of black ice this night", you might better just stay at home. But noooooooooooooooo, there are always dozens of dead every time.
 
Welcome to the real world. I wonder how e.g. Finland or Canada would cope with a major flood.

Experience is what's needed to deal with the forces of nature, not?

By the way: Black ice sounds like a dumb term (who the hell made that up?).
 
In German, it's "Blitzeis". I'm sure some of our WWII enthusiasts will be amused at that. ;)
 
I know the terms "ice on the road" "slippery roads", "freezing rain" and some word which looks like ice (ijs): ijzel.
 
Black ice is just a glamorous term to describe a thin sheet of ice on the road that may be difficult to see because it appears black like the rest of the asphalt.
 
Forostar said:
Welcome to the real world. I wonder how e.g. Finland or Canada would cope with a major flood.

Experience is what's needed to deal with the forces of nature, not?

By the way: Black ice sounds like a dumb term (who the hell made that up?).
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Good point.  Helsinki was mildly flooded (hardly a "major flood" by any standards) a few years ago and that caused all kinds of chaos, and IIRC the rise was only something like 1 metre or less.

But to be honest, even though this country has had to cope with snowy conditions for hundreds of years, every time the first big snowstorm comes, everyone is caught with their pants down.  It seems the collective memory on weather conditions is reset every fall; then when the first snow comes, everything is in chaos and everyone's "but how could we have known" (weather forecasts predicting it for several days) or "how could we have prepared" (get some winter tires for fuck's sake).  Roads are unsystematically cleared, buses and especially trains are late, and no one even has winter clothes (and are then shivering outside waiting for the train).  Granted, it's not as bad as Britain, as everything still works, but is 15 minutes late.  Buses and trains never stop running and schools are never closed. 

Black ice is musta jää in Finnish, which is a literal translation.  It really is black, in most cases (takes the colour of the asphalt below), and you can easily slip on it while walking too (though usually it's not called "black ice" in that context).
 
*insert obligatory reference to the new AC/DC album here*
 
Kopfanatic said:
All you Canadians,Americans, Finns etc must be laughing your heads off at Britains pathetic attempts to cope with the current snow storms.No buses running in London, the underground shut(I didn't know it snowed underground).All the schools shut in Birmingham even though there was hardly any snow there at all.

I can't believe how much this country is going downhill.
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I agree with the country going downhill. But it won't be for much longer, we're almost at the bottom.

The tube is a lot overground though, and on the roads I don't think the cost of extra gritters/ploughs would match the need of them every 20 years or so.
 
national acrobat said:
But it won't be for much longer, we're almost at the bottom.
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Never. Say. That. Every time you say you hit the ground, somebody will throw you a shovel.
 
Perun said:
Never. Say. That. Every time you say you hit the ground, somebody will throw you a shovel.
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Heh, good point. But I want to be standing on the shoulders of giants standing on tall ladders at the top of the slope.
 
In (weather) related news:

In the Netherlands we had the strongest winter in 12 years. A lot of people were skating on natural ice.

schaatsen4.jpg


They had fun. But fun can lead to injuries and costs. Results of two weeks of frost:

13.000 skaters with an emergency treatment
82 million euro medical costs

(Two weeks in a normal winter without ice on the canals and lakes: 680 people with an emergency treatment)
 
That post made me laugh, to be honest.  Skating on natural ice, how special.  But then I realised I haven't done it myself in a few years, as you can only do it inland in the lakes, not on the sea ice.

Did those 13,000 injuries come from the ice being too weak and people falling in the water, or were the injured just really bad skaters?
 
It is special and part of our culture. The Dutch have a bond with the water for many centuries. Just look at a map, or google earth. :)

To get an idea of this skating virus, check out these beautiful images filmed from the sky!

http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/artikelen ... elden.html



Answer to your question: Most of the people just went on their ass. :)

Some people skated for the first time, and there's lots of people with not enough experience, and remember:
it was 12 years ago that so many people went out in the open air.
 
In Canada, ponds still freeze over every winter, and the Rideau Canal in Ottawa is often full of people skating in January and February.  However, I'd gladly pay the extra health-related taxes if people can get out and have fun.  That's the risk we take when we opt into socialized medicine.
 
Yes. I guess many of these injured people will go out again when a next opportunity comes.

One more film (made by my father) where you can see some other creatures land on the ice! :)
 
My standard for a cold winter is whether or not Lake Superior freezes over - I mean the entire surface, all the way from the US to Canada. For those who don't know: Superior is the world's largest freshwater lake, and it rarely freezes over all the way (water is superb at holding heat). IIRC, on average it freezes completely only a few times per century, about every 20 years.

OTOH, Superior is never warm. I've been swimming in it in the middle of summer, and even then it felt like an ice bath. So cold I couldn't even take 2 minutes of it.

I've never been ice skating on anything besides naturally frozen water (i.e. no man-made rinks). I imagine an artificial rink feels like a dream compared to frozen lakes.
 
Not really to be honest.  At least here, lakes are really in rather good condition except that there's loads of snow on them, so they need to be cleared.  It's not really 100% natural skating as there are trucks to clear the snow away (so it's half "man made").  But your average skating rink (in use by schools and junior hockey teams mostly) isn't in perfect condition either, so it's definitely not a "dream" compared to lakes.  But I've once been to a "real" large ice hall, a hockey arena, and damn that ice was slippery.  It's a huge difference, like the difference between the green on a golf field and your back yard.  But it really needs to be an ice that is maintained daily to be like that.
 
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