"Weatherman" wrote
snip
God help this country if the Gulf stream does change direction. Schools
will be closed from November till April every year.

I would love to hear the Scandinavian or Canadian point of view on how we
handle our snowfalls in this country.
Quite frankly I think its too serious to laugh at.

I think we had such a view the other night, Len, when someone in the US
quite understandably wondered what all the fuss was about but, equally, he
clearly didn't understand our weather.

If we had Canadian winters, we'd have Canadian methods for coping with
them. But we have the best (or worst) of all worlds. With such low
probabilities of severe weather, it's hardly surprising that, as a nation,
we place such a low priority on planning (or spending) to cope with it.
The trick is, I think, in developing the systems to cope and then keeping
them live but on-hold. Given the warning we had before yesterday's
episode, I'm appalled that (for example) neither London Underground or
many London Boroughs could field either the men or very simple equipment
needed just to grit the pavements and platforms.

I'm sure there are many citizens who are tonight nursing sprained limbs
and worse because the authorities failed to plan properly.

In answer to your point about climate change, we'd be forced to adapt and
we would do so. It was Benjamin Franklin who invented the pot-bellied
stove, purely as a reaction to the methods of heating that his fellow
Englishmen had brought with them when they first settled and which then
proved to be totally inadequate to cope with the rigours of a north-east
US winter. Not that many Englishmen of that time (or this) could probably
even *imagine* a US winter until they'd actually experienced it.

Regards,

- Tom