London paralyzed by epic snowfall!
Five inch snowfall wreaks havoc! Temperatures plummet to 20° F! All bus services stopped! Flights grounded! Tube crippled by those pesky overground stations! Schools closed! Uni classes canceled! Students pray that snow may continue! And no one bothers to clean the roads!
Well, the road in front of my building looks clean now, though that might be meltage because we're slightly above freezing now, but the sidewalk still looks dirty. No, they didn't clean the sidewalks either. And I'm in central London. I struggled all of yesterday not to fall on my ass. It wasn't even that cold. That 20° thing was after midnight. During the day it was 30° F/-1° C. This whole thing is just silly.
Snippets from yesterday's Yahoo! News:
An army of snow ploughs and gritters is working around the clock to clear roads, but motorists, who were warned only to make essential journeys, were caught in tailbacks of more than 50 miles and queues of up to two-and-a-half hours.
Earlier, major airports closed runways, all bus services were cancelled in London during the morning rush hour and dozens of trains - including all Southeastern services in and out of the capital - were suspended.
On the London Underground, ten of the 11 lines were either completely or partly suspended as a Transport for London spokesman blamed the "quantity of snowfall" for the extent of the disruption.
(For those wondering why the hell the Underground would be affected, many lines have overground stations. In some cases, like in the Circle line, they're intermittent, but in others like the Northern and Picadilly, it's one solid stretch of overground stations followed by all underground stations, so I don't see why they couldn't just shut down the overground stations and have the rest of the service running smoothly instead of having severe delays in the whole line. I feel sorry for people going to the airport, though. Picadilly has 20 minutes of overground before arriving at Heathrow, but it's not like they could have gotten a flight soon, anyway.)
A snapshot survey of more than 300 employers found one in five adults had stayed away from work today because of the extreme weather.
More than 11cm of snow fell at Heathrow Airport, 25cm over the North Downs in Kent and Surrey, 8cm along the eastern side of the Pennines and 1cm across the Welsh border.
More than 1,000 primary and secondary schools were forced to shut their doors due to the adverse weather conditions. Schools in southern England were among the worst affected.
At Heathrow Airport, a Cyprus Airways flight, CY 332, from Larnaca strayed on to a grassed area while taxiing to the terminal building in the snow after landing shortly after 8.30am. None of the passengers were injured.
Nearly 800 flights were cancelled at Heathrow and others were subject to long delays. About 200 Ryanair flights into and out of the UK were cancelled, mostly at Stansted, and all BA flights from Heathrow were cancelled until 5pm.
And some pics:
Well, the road in front of my building looks clean now, though that might be meltage because we're slightly above freezing now, but the sidewalk still looks dirty. No, they didn't clean the sidewalks either. And I'm in central London. I struggled all of yesterday not to fall on my ass. It wasn't even that cold. That 20° thing was after midnight. During the day it was 30° F/-1° C. This whole thing is just silly.
Snippets from yesterday's Yahoo! News:
An army of snow ploughs and gritters is working around the clock to clear roads, but motorists, who were warned only to make essential journeys, were caught in tailbacks of more than 50 miles and queues of up to two-and-a-half hours.
Earlier, major airports closed runways, all bus services were cancelled in London during the morning rush hour and dozens of trains - including all Southeastern services in and out of the capital - were suspended.
On the London Underground, ten of the 11 lines were either completely or partly suspended as a Transport for London spokesman blamed the "quantity of snowfall" for the extent of the disruption.
(For those wondering why the hell the Underground would be affected, many lines have overground stations. In some cases, like in the Circle line, they're intermittent, but in others like the Northern and Picadilly, it's one solid stretch of overground stations followed by all underground stations, so I don't see why they couldn't just shut down the overground stations and have the rest of the service running smoothly instead of having severe delays in the whole line. I feel sorry for people going to the airport, though. Picadilly has 20 minutes of overground before arriving at Heathrow, but it's not like they could have gotten a flight soon, anyway.)
A snapshot survey of more than 300 employers found one in five adults had stayed away from work today because of the extreme weather.
More than 11cm of snow fell at Heathrow Airport, 25cm over the North Downs in Kent and Surrey, 8cm along the eastern side of the Pennines and 1cm across the Welsh border.
More than 1,000 primary and secondary schools were forced to shut their doors due to the adverse weather conditions. Schools in southern England were among the worst affected.
At Heathrow Airport, a Cyprus Airways flight, CY 332, from Larnaca strayed on to a grassed area while taxiing to the terminal building in the snow after landing shortly after 8.30am. None of the passengers were injured.
Nearly 800 flights were cancelled at Heathrow and others were subject to long delays. About 200 Ryanair flights into and out of the UK were cancelled, mostly at Stansted, and all BA flights from Heathrow were cancelled until 5pm.
And some pics:
