Snow Week # 1

[jacey]

Musings on snow

Living up here on the Pennines I learned to drive in snow as soon as I passed my test aged 17 because - well you just had to in the winters of the late 60s and 70s. I can still hear my dad's voice: second gear, easy on the pedal, keep moving slowly and steadily and don't touch your breaks or steer sharply (smooth out the curves as much as possible) and DON'T STOP for anything short of life and limb on an uphill stretch. In a skid, steer into it - but try not to let it develop that far. It helped (then) that I had one of the few front wheel drive cars around. They are much more common nowadays of course. BB is a good driver on snow, too. There have been times when we got home afely in a snowstorm, overtaking stuff with its nose in snowdrifts.

Once on the M25 with about eight inches or more of snow on the ground and us in a Renault Trafic (front wheel drive, bless it) we were in the usual sort of nose to tail traffic mayhem and had slipped and slithered our way from snowlocked Folkestone. We were despiaring of making it home within the day when we spotted a gap on the hard shoulder at the side of three parallel snowbound artics, just at Junction 12. BB made for the gap. All the cars in front of us were leaving the motorway, but BB squeezed the van past the artics and we had the M25 to ourselves for a whole stretch between junctions. Just us and white snow with no tyre-tracks. The road was no problem, even though most of it was gently uphill. The other traffic was what had bitched it up. (It's entirely possible that the three artics may have been meant to close the road, but there was no policeman on duty or diversion signs to say so.)
:-)
Anyhow they say the snow is the worst for 18 years. I know it's not convenient and I know it causes some folks hardship, but i went out today with my camera while it was still coming down and I'd say it's the best we've had, if not for 18 years then for at least 13, when the snow was deep enough to be serious.

Above is our road at  1.00 p.m. this afternoon and below is the main road through the village.

 And at the top of the lane even though it was still dropping in half-crowns it looked like this at about 1.10 p.m.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

by our standards this is not a lot of snow, but when it's not something you are used to, it doesn't matter how much or how little it is. I'm glad you know how to drive in it/on it, and that you are okay.

Stay that way, okay?

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I don't have anywhere urgent to be. I work from home and can pull up the drawbridge. I have a meeting tomorrow night, but it's in the village and I can walk. While the snow is powdery and fresh it's easy walking, but when it gets compacted and slippery I rapidly lose my love for it and tend to stay in. I've had too many wrenched knees and bad backs over the years (and once a broken wrist) to like slippery conditions.

I am not a creature gifted with natural balance and grace.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Nor am I, says she who has broken BOTH ankles multiple times in this weather.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ouch. My sympathies.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I am not a creature gifted with natural balance and grace.

Hee. Me neither. Exactly that...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

My mum always said that I could trip up if one blade of grass was higher than the other - and indeed, I have proved it on many occasions.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

snowlocked Folkestone#

That? Is such an unexpected phrase...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was one of those unusual snow storms that came up from the south east and hit Kent first. We'd made it to the Wednesday gig and by the skin of out teeth to the Thursday gig (unfortunately the audience didn't and we hadn't the heart to charge our fee), but the Friday gig (a much bigger, wealthier club) took the option to cancel when we reminded them that if we made it through the snow they'd have to pay us even if their audience didn't. So we were heading North from F'stone by nine in the morning with the snow still falling. All the sercices on the M2 were closed (well, most of them were Little Chuffs at that time) and we were despairing of finding a loo-stop south of South Mims.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

And here we don't really have any snow. It's all melted!

See icon for last serious snowfall here...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

It's 1 a.m. and it's still falling here. All the day's footprint tracks have been covered. No wind, though. That's when we really get trouble here because we're so high. The wind blows from the west and howls off the moor and then snow can drift alarmingly. I've seen it banked up fifteen feet high on the Penistone road (A629) where the ploughs have gut a gorge through it.