On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:23:02 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> scott wrote:
> 
>> Hehe I laughed when I saw the bbc website too, with it's "Heavy Snow"
>> shock-headline, only to be followed by photos like these:
>> 
>> http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45435000/jpg/
_45435350_006818362-1.jpg
> 
> PEOPLE OF BRITAN, THIS IS NOT WHAT HEAVY SNOW LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS A
> MINOR FLURRY. GET SOME PERSPECTIVE.

Well, one of the things that always amused me was seeing cities shut down 
down south because of a snow amount like what you got.  The thing is, all-
weather tires on cars isn't common in the southern US AFAIK, and the 
south tends not to have snow removal equipment.  Couple that with people 
who have never actually driven on anything worse than a wet, oily road 
and put them on a skating rink....it can get more dangerous than driving 
with experienced winter-weather drivers in Utah on black ice.

How much snow removal equipment is there in Milton Keynes?

> Why, when I was a lad (no! come back!), my old man used to drag me and
> my little sister up to the top of the hill, and then she'd sledge to the
> bottom again. And let me tell you, I can remember walking in snow *so
> deep* that I'd be up to my knees in it, and it all used to fall in the
> top of my boots! :-P
> 
> OK, my boots were probably only a foot high or so, but still... the snow
> used to lay for *weeks* on end, not an hour or two. Hell, as recently as
> 1996 I remember us getting about 20 cm of snow, and nobody seemed that
> bothered about it.
> 
>> What on Earth would the headline be if there was actually, you know,
>> about 30cm of snow?
> 
> God only knows... :-D
> 
> I'm still unimpressed by the pictures of the "blizzard conditions"
> featuring a bunch of people trying to push a car out of the ankle-deep
> snow. I mean, why are cars spinning their wheels in 1.5 cm of snow??
> There was more snow than that in my estate, and nobody appeared to have
> any trouble with it...
> 
> OOC, how much snow is there in the various other parts of the world
> where POVers are reading this??

Well, I grew up in Minnesota and spent Christmases in Chicago when I was 
a kid; I learned to drive on packed snow and ice, so there isn't much 
that bothers me to drive on, even black ice (though obviously not my 
first choice of road surface because that stuff is incredibly dangerous).

We've got maybe 3" of snow on the ground right now here in Salt Lake 
City.  Up in the mountains, though, there will be more than a hundred 
inches of snow by now.  For example, Alta, a place my wife and I like to 
hike during the sunner, has 101" of snow right now.

But Alta is also at an altitude of 9,664 feet ASL.

Jim

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