If there's one thing the 'bad' weather has shown us...

shm_uk

.. it's that the British really are world class in the art of moaning and complaining

(as if we needed proof)

notsoblue

its that Hybrids have their uses after all...

snailracer

And don't throw away those cheap knobbly tyres that were originally fitted on the bike.

Cafewanda

....... I should have bought heated gloves and insoles earlier in the year :roll: .

Butterd2

shm_uk wrote:

.. it's that the British really are world class in the art of moaning and complaining

(as if we needed proof)

+1, watched C4 news last night and they just seemed to go from one whinger to the next for a full hour. MTFU!

And as for John Snow encouraging the public to "get film of the events out of Heathrow airport so they can be seen" FFS !!!! this is west London we are talking about not Zimbabwe or Burma. Pathetic.

deptfordmarmoset

That it's possible to stand outside in zero degrees and talk about how mild it is!

Initialised

That you need to buy spikey tyres in the summer months.

hatbeard

shm_uk wrote:

.. it's that the British really are world class in the art of moaning and complaining

(as if we needed proof)

I was a bit ranty when I got in yesterday and some idiot on the news was complaining about the weather delaying flights and came up with this gem...

"I had exactly the same problems last year, why can't they just get these problems fixed"

... if you had this much hassle last year why the f**k did you do the exact same thing this year and leave it to the last minute you daft bint.

Initialised

When it snows Britain goes into disaster movie mode.

bluehelmet

That some people think the government should be able to control the weather... :roll:

Idiots.

suzyb

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

That it's possible to stand outside in zero degrees and talk about how mild it is!

haha so true.

rolf_f

Initialised wrote:

When it snows Britain goes into disaster movie mode.

You mean like the rest of Europe?! It's all pretty chaotic over there as well and they normally get more snow than us.

Butterd2 wrote:

And as for John Snow encouraging the public to "get film of the events out of Heathrow airport so they can be seen" FFS !!!! this is west London we are talking about not Zimbabwe or Burma. Pathetic.

Best quote I got from some people stuck at Heathrow calling Radio 4 was "It was like a war zone; there were no buses or taxis" - that's the problem with Afghanistan; no public transport

jonny_trousers

Loving the irony of moaning about moaners

hatbeard

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Loving the irony of moaning about moaners

I'm not moaning I'm ranting, there's a difference.

jonny_trousers

Well I'll add a positive...

That the bus service to and from my place is actually pretty good.

Butterd2

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Well I'll add a positive...

That the bus service to and from my place is actually pretty good.

The cycle service to and from my front door is excellent!!

hatbeard

Butterd2 wrote:

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Well I'll add a positive...

That the bus service to and from my place is actually pretty good.

The cycle service to and from my front door is excellent!!

really? I heard it was quite slow

Justatheory

That I need a MTB. Duly ordered.

jonny_trousers

Butterd2 wrote:

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Well I'll add a positive...

That the bus service to and from my place is actually pretty good.

The cycle service to and from my front door is excellent!!

Sadly mine sucks on account of a 25mph meeting with a Mini Cooper. Normal service will be resumed shortly, however.

Jay dubbleU

bluehelmet wrote:

That some people think the government should be able to control the weather... :roll:

Idiots.

They do - its all a plot to keep us in the UK so that we spend more at home and improve the economy

daviesee

What pi$$es me off is that this happens every year. Okay, bigger/worse/earlier than usual this year but I believe the same happened only 2 weeks ago, as well as at the start of this year, the year before that...........We never learn.

Snow in winter? Who'd have thunk it? :?

The biggest problem is not the authorities but ill prepared people and lazy bar stewards. In 30 years of working I have never missed a day due to the weather. Those stuck in gridlock have my sympathy but some muppet caused the problem. Usually a jack-knived lorry :evil:

BAA? A week to clear some snow? Pathetic. I made the decision to stop flying via Gatwick or Heathrow 3 years ago. I see no reason to change that plan. Rant over....

rjsterry

I've been struck by how many people want someone else to do something about the planes/trains/roads. Nobody seems to think, "maybe I should have bought some snow tyres/checked the departures before setting off for the station/airport."

suzyb

daviesee wrote:

What pi$$es me off is that this happens every year. Okay, bigger/worse/earlier than usual this year but I believe the same happened only 2 weeks ago, as well as at the start of this year, the year before that...........We never learn.

But it doesn't though

We've had bad weather the past two winters but as I recall the winter's before that didn't have half as much snow (if any at all).

Chris McG

what its shown us?
:idea:
That MTBs are superior and everyone should have one to get out when it snows (but not a crappy apollo or such like) :P

rhext

I guess it's also shown us that the standard whinge 'everyone else brushes it off and gets on with things whereas we grind to a halt' is pretty much rubbish. I know we've had a lot of disruption, but it seems that the rest of Europe has been far from immune.

Butterd2

hatbeard wrote:

Butterd2 wrote:

Jonny_Trousers wrote:

Well I'll add a positive...

That the bus service to and from my place is actually pretty good.

The cycle service to and from my front door is excellent!!

really? I heard it was quite slow

To be fair the last few days have been but this morning, despite a minging hangover, normal service was resumed. Had a lovely 20+mph ride all the way in from Greenwich one way to Tower bridge with a guy on a Roberts. No racing just a good high speed cruise which has taken my hangover down from 10/10 to probably a 7/10 based on the Sufferfest pain scale.

daviesee

suzyb wrote:

daviesee wrote:

What pi$$es me off is that this happens every year. Okay, bigger/worse/earlier than usual this year but I believe the same happened only 2 weeks ago, as well as at the start of this year, the year before that...........We never learn.

But it doesn't though

We've had bad weather the past two winters but as I recall the winter's before that didn't have half as much snow (if any at all).

Depends on where you are. Generally there has been around 10 years of mild winters which everyone has gotten used to. We are now back to a proper winter, although early.

I have been travelling up to Aberdeen for work for the past 10 years and I can assure you that on that route it certainly does have at least one serious snowfall every year.

Here is a wee link to show what has happened to refresh the rose tinted memory

http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?acti ... hist;sess=

There is also this.........

Reports about snow hitting the south of England.

Jan 2010- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8442739.stm

Feb 2009 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/0 ... her-travel

Jan 2008 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7167475.stm

Feb 2007- http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/f ... hernews.uk

November 2005 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... matechange

Feb 2005 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Unite ... now_events

Jan 2004 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... pared.html

suzyb

daviesee wrote:

suzyb wrote:

daviesee wrote:

What pi$$es me off is that this happens every year. Okay, bigger/worse/earlier than usual this year but I believe the same happened only 2 weeks ago, as well as at the start of this year, the year before that...........We never learn.

But it doesn't though

We've had bad weather the past two winters but as I recall the winter's before that didn't have half as much snow (if any at all).

Depends on where you are. Generally there has been around 10 years of mild winters which everyone has gotten used to. We are now back to a proper winter, although early.

I have been travelling up to Aberdeen for work for the past 10 years and I can assure you that on that route it certainly does have at least one serious snowfall every year.

Here is a wee link to show what has happened to refresh the rose tinted memory

http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?acti ... hist;sess=

There is also this.........

Reports about snow hitting the south of England.

Jan 2010- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8442739.stm

Feb 2009 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/0 ... her-travel

Jan 2008 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7167475.stm

Feb 2007- http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/f ... hernews.uk

November 2005 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... matechange

Feb 2005 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Unite ... now_events

Jan 2004 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... pared.html

That far north has a completely different climate to central scotland

I don't remember snow this bad and this long lasting (before last year) since I was a kid. I do remember a few winters where we got a load dumped on us but it didn't really last more than a couple of weeks and it wasn't as recurring as it's been.

Anyway it is probably about time we started planning for this kind of weather. At the very least making plans on how to avoid the chaos of the other week.

Initialised

Totally agree, last January was the worst I'd ever seen, I made a point of spending hours driving (on empty) frozen roads of Northumberland and Durham in the snow and took things as far as (almost) intentionally crashing into a snow drift and digging it out. This year, I pretty much left the car under the snow (so the effort last year seems wasted), as such I was the only one at work who was never late because of the weather clogging up the roads.

This year it seems worse and longer. It started on Wednesday 24th and it snowed yesterday and there's more due tomorrow or boxing day. I've never seen it last a whole month before. But that's not to say it hasn't happened before:

netweatherTV wrote:

1657-58: Beginning a period of long lying snow, lasting from December through until March!

1813-1814: One of the 4/5 coldest winters in the CET series. A memorable winter overall. January to March was very cold. January had a CET of -2.9 (third coldest since records began?). The tidal stretch of the Thames froze for the last time, the old London Bridge was removed, and other factors helped increase the rivers flow, preventing ice forming again. If it was the same now as it was back then, we would still see it being frozen. A frost fair was held on the Thames, possibly the last 'great' one. The frost began in late December, approaching the new year. Thick fog came with the frost, as was common in London at the time. Probably one of the snowiest winters in the last 300 years, although 1947 was likely to have been snowier. Heavy snow fell for 2-3 days in early January, before a temporary thaw of 1 day. Then the frost just returned, possibly more severe than before due to the snow cover, and persisted until early February. A thaw followed later, and ice floating down the river damaged ships. Fog was also a hazard and took a long time to clear, lasting from late December to early January, an unusual occurrence. Visibility was down to 20 yards at times! Traffic hardly moved, and travelling became very dangerous. The fog cleared following a Northerly gale in early January, when heavy snow fell. A severe and very snowy winter.

1851-53: The first of these winters saw heavy snowfall in Scotland. The North of Scotland saw the first of the heavy snow. The railway from Aberdeen to the South was badly affected, but was kept open. Blizzards caused deaths. The storms stopped near the end of January. 1852-53 was severe as well, particularly severe in February though. Low temperatures and heavy snowfall lasted well into March for most.

1885-1886: Snow fell in October, November, December, January, February, March, April and May! London recorded 1ft of snow in7 hours in early January. In the North a blizzard dumped 2ft of snow widely, and in May the North of England got a heavy fall. Very Snowy

1927-28: Snow fell mid December in England and Wales, and on Christmas day through Boxing day, a blizzard raged in Southern England, from Kent to Cornwall. 1-2ft of snow fell, with 20ft drifts on Salisbury Plain! Christmas day must have been phenomenal! Snow fell mid March in the East. Very Snowy.

1968-70: The first of these 2 winters saw snow in late December, around the New Year, in Eastern Scotland and England. Eastern Yorkshire saw a massive 16 inches! Mid February saw more snow, this time more to the West, with England and Wales seeing the most. Mid March saw more in the Pennines, and a TV mast fell down. 69-70 saw snow for Northern England, North Wales, and Scotland in mid November. Mid December saw snow for the North again. Mid February, most parts, and early March, snow in Wales and England, with the Midlands getting 12 inches.

1968 sounds very much like 2010-2011 (so far), my Mum described it as snowing from Christmas until March (She lived in Coventry at the time). So this snow is not unprecedented but like January it hadn't yet been experienced by the current generation. Not to scare anyone but it could last for another month or two in some parts if the ~40 year cycle I've come up with up above holds true.

Source: http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?acti ... hist;sess=

One thing that has surprised me is that a link between the Icelandic volcano and this winter hasn't been confirmed yet.

deptfordmarmoset

This winter has just reminded me that there's no elegant way of dismounting with slicks on sheet ice.

rhext

deptfordmarmoset wrote:

This winter has just reminded me that there's no elegant way of dismounting with slicks on sheet ice.

Rubbish: jump off the back. Skid elegantly to a stop. If you've got the speed/angle of dismount correctly, the bike will come round in a perfect circle, so you can catch hold of the saddle as it passes. Takes a bit of practice, of course, but it's well worth it. Probably.