Snow! How un-prepared are we?

It's lovely here today... if you don't HAVE to go to work: over 15 cm of snow fell overnight (the heviest for 18 years), more to come today.

But how prepared are we for something that may not be so frequent, though that may change with "global warming" bringing more erratic weather patterns?

Not that well it seems:

• The roads were pretty chaotic this morning, with several motorways closed due to jacknifed lorries. The question to ask: why allow articulated lorries to drive when it's snowing?
• London seems to have virtually no snow plough and gritting doesn't help much.
  
• This meant there were no busses, at all, this morning.
• Only one tube line was fully functional -even though I thought they were running underground and thus not affected by snow. The question to ask: are there contigency plans to get essential staff to their positions?
• Same for the trains.
• City aiport had to shut completely, Heathrow had only one runway operational early in the morning and quickly shut the other one and a large de-icing backlog and a planed slipped on the taxiway, Gatwick stayed about open,
  
• In terms of information, TFL was very good, National Rail was pointing on the operating companies' web sites which did not any good for South West Trains whose web site was down. Shame on them!
• On the school front, they were of course shut (never mind if some parents need to go to work) but some class reps send SMS'es early this morning and some updated their web site at 07:31! (note: sending an email at 09:30 doesn't help).

Tags: London, snow, UK, transportation, airport, Heathrow, Gatwick, railways, DfT, richmondtransits.blog