Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Careful What You Wish For....

Right then, I'm a right child when it comes to aptly wintery conditions in winter, sledging, snowball fights, building snowmen....I'm your girl, therefore the worst snow storm to hit for nearly 30 years....my fault.

We got off rather lightly in Bognor or should I say covered rather lightly.....Though I haven't even been out to have a proper explore yet, you know me and walking on perfectly flat and un-slidey pavements so tempting fate on uber icy ones...I don't think so.  Though I must say I'm absoultely itching to get up on the downs to have a proper look.

Apparently, there are down sides to this much snow covering the land, over 1,000 people were stranded overnight in their cars on a local motorway (my sister herself very, nearly had to abandon her own efforts of getting home last night, her journey clocking an epic time of 3 hours to drive abut 20 miles....on a motorway), 3,000 schools shut (only a couple of days after going back after the Christmas break), buses and trains have been running on limited schedules, if at all, all day, powercuts have affected some parts of my county and as for the majority of the roads around these parts...well....skis...snowboards....snow ploughs...hell, even tennis rackets tied to the bottom of your shoes...are modes of transportation which marginally increase the prospect of a person actually reaching their destination.

Basically, we so very rarely get these kind of weather conditions that the country is woefully ill-prepared for the event and thus the entire country pretty much grinds to a halt...meh....all entertaining though, and the weather is set to continue temperatures remaining in the minus figures for the next week at least....I need something (or someone) to snuggle up with.

Until I've managed to get a few snaps myself heres a couple from the Beeb's website.

The Motorway, in Hampshire, which cut off many drivers leaving the poor buggers to spend the night in their cars



Woods in Sussex



The HMS Victory at the Portsmouth Dock yard



Sunset in snow covered Sussex


4 comments:

Kimberly said...

In the 20's here in FL and the coast had a massive power outage last night. Hope we don't lose ours!!!!! They said we could possibly have snow this weekend! I want to hear more about "Global Warming" from Al Gore! LOL

Firefly Mom said...

3 hours to go 20 miles - wow! I do have to say that I always keep blankets and such in the car...just in case. We had some friends get stuck overnight in the snow with their two kids (both under 4 at the time). The dad hiked out for help the next morning.

Emma said...

Thing is we NEVER get snow like this, it's normally reserved for Scotland, up North and Counties which stick out like Kent or Cornwall. Therefore when it does happen no-one is prepared and it doesn't help that within a half hour some places had several inches dumped on them...my sister says there were snowflakes the size of your fist falling from the sky, not cool when you're trying to drive a car.

Thankfully I've not heard of too many accidents and generally people are listening to advice and staying off the roads.

Problem is now, temperatures dropped to -18 in some places last night and everything is now compacted and uber icy.....brrrr.

Of course the pavements aren't being gritted (hell, the road outside my front door is barely passable), hence my reluctance to venture outside....And the forecast is more snow and freezing conditions....how long till summer?

Firefly Mom said...

Yes, the counties told us that because of budget cuts they'd be plowing and sanding even fewer roads this year. Luckily, we haven't had hardly any snow or ice (though the bit we did get had cars going everywhere). I'd just be happy if the winds would stop! About 15 miles from our house, they were reporting gusts of up to 100 mph. It was a little funny watching the reporters get blown over ;D