Gritter and Twisted
 

Hardly any snow here in London and although there were heavy showers in Kent and Sussex all this 'snowed in stuff' has me puzzled. Eventually however I put it down to several things


There are more cars on the road now than ever seen in the winters that took place in the eighties, 81/82, 78/79 and 62/63. Apparently in 1960 there were a total of approx 7 million vehicles in the UK and by 2002 some 35.5 million vehicles (note not just cars)

We also have the fact that the current young generation of drivers has virtually no experience in driving in severe cold snowy conditions in the UK between 1997 and 2010 there wasn't a lot of it about, snow that is.

Add on to that for every car accident the police want the close the road of and if fatal treat it as a crime scene.

I also think that the modern cars start so readily and warm so quick that they belie the actual conditions giving a feeling of unfounded security -especially with sharp hills.


Finally wall to wall communication with texts, emails and mobiles etc means any problems are news immediately whereas in the past the news would have taken days to filter through.

So cars abandoned as a proxy for severe weather is constantly exaggerating something that wouldn't have been thought newsworthy several decades ago.

Gritter and Twisted
 

On 12/03/2013 20:36, Lawrence13 wrote:
Hardly any snow here in London and although there were heavy showers in Kent and Sussex all this 'snowed in stuff' has me puzzled. Eventually however I put it down to several things


There are more cars on the road now than ever seen in the winters that took place in the eighties, 81/82, 78/79 and 62/63. Apparently in 1960 there were a total of approx 7 million vehicles in the UK and by 2002 some 35.5 million vehicles (note not just cars)

We also have the fact that the current young generation of drivers has virtually no experience in driving in severe cold snowy conditions in the UK between 1997 and 2010 there wasn't a lot of it about, snow that is.

Add on to that for every car accident the police want the close the road of and if fatal treat it as a crime scene.

I also think that the modern cars start so readily and warm so quick that they belie the actual conditions giving a feeling of unfounded security -especially with sharp hills.


Finally wall to wall communication with texts, emails and mobiles etc means any problems are news immediately whereas in the past the news would have taken days to filter through.

So cars abandoned as a proxy for severe weather is constantly exaggerating something that wouldn't have been thought newsworthy several decades ago.




Seeing the news reports from Kent and Sussex earlier, I don't think many
people in those counties would have put the snow in the "heavy shower"
category!!!

Otherwise, what you say is probably true.

jim, Northampton

Gritter and Twisted
 

On Mar 12, 8:36*pm, Lawrence13 wrote:
Hardly any snow here in London and although there were heavy showers in Kent and Sussex all this 'snowed in stuff' has me puzzled. Eventually however I put it down to several things

There are more cars on the road now than ever seen in the winters that took place in the eighties, 81/82, 78/79 and 62/63. Apparently in 1960 there were a total of approx 7 million vehicles in the UK and by 2002 some 35.5 million vehicles (note not just cars)

We also have the fact that the current young generation of drivers has virtually no experience in driving in severe cold snowy conditions in the UK between 1997 and 2010 there wasn't a lot of it about, snow that is.

Add on to that for every car accident the police want the close the road of and if fatal treat it as a crime scene.

I also think that the modern cars start so readily and warm so quick that they belie the actual conditions giving a feeling of unfounded security -especially with sharp hills.

Finally wall to wall communication with texts, emails and mobiles etc means any problems are news immediately whereas in the past the news would have taken days to filter through.

So cars abandoned as a proxy for severe weather is constantly exaggerating something that wouldn't have been thought newsworthy several decades ago.

This is all due to the cars being the wrong sort. In the good old days
they were made by Red Robbo British Management thus they all leaked
oil night and day (If and when they worked.)

The resulting skid pan conditions experienced by all and sundry gave
the more mature of us plenty of experience with slippery roads.

Gritter and Twisted
 

On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 20:36:41 UTC, Lawrence13 wrote:
Hardly any snow here in London and although there were heavy showers in Kent and Sussex all this 'snowed in stuff' has me puzzled.

The zero snow I had in Blackheath was in contrast to about an inch (give or take a bit for exaggeration!) covering just 9 miles south at my parents' in Orpington. A mixture of urban heat island and the main snowband being further south, I'm guessing...

Gritter and Twisted
 

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013 3:55:14 PM UTC, Richard Dixon wrote:
On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 20:36:41 UTC, Lawrence13 wrote: Hardly any snow here in London and although there were heavy showers in Kent and Sussex all this 'snowed in stuff' has me puzzled. The zero snow I had in Blackheath was in contrast to about an inch (give or take a bit for exaggeration!) covering just 9 miles south at my parents' in Orpington. A mixture of urban heat island and the main snowband being further south, I'm guessing...

a combination of soil temps being a bit too warm and intensity of snow in our region not being enough? I would've thought that the cooling effect of that NE'ly wind would have negated any urban heat island effect, with the view that it was not modified by the heat of the centre

Gritter and Twisted
 

On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 16:01:57 UTC, Scott W wrote:

a combination of soil temps being a bit too warm and intensity of snow in our region not being enough? I would've thought that the cooling effect of that NE'ly wind would have negated any urban heat island effect, with the view that it was not modified by the heat of the centre

In all the snows since I've moved to Blackheath, Orpington appears to have got usually much more - must be a vagary of the orography or maybe that Orpington is prone to more convergence in easterly flows (it's "sort of" on the upslope of the N Downs?)

Just had a moderate snow shower in London that was heavier than anything that fell over the weekend. Some decent sized flakes. What fun.

Richard

Gritter and Twisted
 

Just going back to the way people drive for a moment, a lot of modern
cars are quite hard to get any feedback from. They are so quiet, with
everything including the throttle being controlled electronically that
it is often hard to know what is happening. You can wheelspin a car
like a Mondeo or Audi and not realise it because the direct feedback
that you get from an old car isn't there.