"Tom Bennett" wrote in message
...
I am thoroughly enjoying today's crisp feel here, under perfectly blue
skies and brilliant sunshine. Temp 0.4C ATM.

I missed the teatime event yesterday (I was still working in the basement
of an office in Central London) but I was stuck in E. London for a while
in the evening. I notice it again resulted from the classic sudden
teatime snowfall, (c.f. 30th Jan 2003) with the roads freezing almost
straight away, which was talked about a couple of weeks ago on this ng.

There's a lot of "who's to blame" talk ATM, but I do think that the
gritters really have no chance in this situation, where heavy standing
traffic forms and then the gritters can't get through the gridlock. Maybe
it's more an effect of the growing volume of traffic than the ability of
the utilities to cope.

There was gridlock here in west Sheffield from 3.30pm onwards as everyone
jumped in their cars and tried to get home. All the side roads were
treacherous compacted skating rinks by 4.30pm.

Fair point about the gritters, but surely their management could see from
the radar images that the snow was coming? They could have gone out an hour
before, surely.

Or maybe they don't have the internet!

- Michael