It seems that every time this widespread chaos occurs with the fall of a
snowflake, everybody in the UK seems to think that we are the only country
that never copes properly with the emergency
Oh boy - you should see and hear the navel-gazing ( awful metaphor - sorry)
going on here in France after the problems of the last couple of days in and
around Paris. No machines in the places where they were needed, the buck
being passed down from the government to various other bodies, the minister
of the environment saying of course it wasn't a shambles, and then having to
back track, the prime minister - in Moscow- blaming Météo France (apparently
they'd forecast 10 cms of snow instead of 11) the owners of abandoned cars
threatened with being reported (until someone probably realised that that
would clog up the justice system, so there was a repeat of the back tracking
manoeuvre), and because there is no show without Punch, Sarkozy wants to
'understand, in order to do better'. One of the possible presidential
candidates is talking about' culpable inertia'
It's well seen it's the pantomime season

Liz Owen

"Liz Owen" wrote in message
...
It seems that every time this widespread chaos occurs with the fall of a
snowflake, everybody in the UK seems to think that we are the only country
that never copes properly with the emergency
Oh boy - you should see and hear the navel-gazing ( awful metaphor -
sorry) going on here in France after the problems of the last couple of
days in and around Paris. No machines in the places where they were
needed, the buck being passed down from the government to various other
bodies, the minister of the environment saying of course it wasn't a
shambles, and then having to back track, the prime minister - in Moscow-
blaming Météo France (apparently they'd forecast 10 cms of snow instead of
11) the owners of abandoned cars threatened with being reported (until
someone probably realised that that would clog up the justice system, so
there was a repeat of the back tracking manoeuvre), and because there is
no show without Punch, Sarkozy wants to 'understand, in order to do
better'. One of the possible presidential candidates is talking about'
culpable inertia'
It's well seen it's the pantomime season

Liz Owen

A former colleague of mine who now lives Paris sent me this report
http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-20h/neige-me...u-6182392.html
My French is pretty hopeless these days but I think it follows on from what
you were saying.

Jon.

"Liz Owen" wrote in message
...
It seems that every time this widespread chaos occurs with the fall of a
snowflake, everybody in the UK seems to think that we are the only country
that never copes properly with the emergency
Oh boy - you should see and hear the navel-gazing ( awful metaphor -
sorry) going on here in France after the problems of the last couple of
days in and around Paris. No machines in the places where they were
needed, the buck being passed down from the government to various other
bodies, the minister of the environment saying of course it wasn't a
shambles, and then having to back track, the prime minister - in Moscow-
blaming Météo France (apparently they'd forecast 10 cms of snow instead of
11) the owners of abandoned cars threatened with being reported (until
someone probably realised that that would clog up the justice system, so
there was a repeat of the back tracking manoeuvre), and because there is
no show without Punch, Sarkozy wants to 'understand, in order to do
better'. One of the possible presidential candidates is talking about'
culpable inertia'
It's well seen it's the pantomime season

I suspect it happens in *any* area of the world where heavy snow
is part of the winter climate, but happens infrequently enough to make
large scale investment into dealing with it not economically viable.
I imagine the south eastern United States (excluding Florida) also
falls into this category.

Talking of Florida I once saw some footage of cars sliding all
over icy roads in Miami. it was only a slight frost by our standards
but nobody had a clue how to deal with it.
I wonder how many gritting lorries the city of Miami has?
--
Col

Bolton, Lancashire
160m asl

Here in NE Florida they had an inch or too of snow one time, that
partly melted, not surprising, but refroze. My wife slid down a long
"hill" to get into work, thankfully no one else was on the road at the
time, even her boss had said she'd not be coming in......in short they
just don't know what to do.

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 at 18:28:03, MahFL
wrote in uk.sci.weather :

Here in NE Florida they had an inch or too of snow one time, that
partly melted, not surprising, but refroze. My wife slid down a long
"hill" to get into work, thankfully no one else was on the road at the
time, even her boss had said she'd not be coming in......in short they
just don't know what to do.

At least in Florida they have an excuse not to be prepared...
--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham (change 'invalid83261' to 'blueyonder' to email me)

On 10/12/10 17:35, Liz Owen wrote:
It seems that every time this widespread chaos occurs with the fall of a
snowflake, everybody in the UK seems to think that we are the only country
that never copes properly with the emergency

Exactly, it is amazing how much this fallacy is accepted. Any country is
going to struggle with conditions that are way outside the mean climate
for that country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PApZm9-rwFc