Snow! The beast from the East arrives in London.
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Title : Snow! The beast from the East arrives in London.
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You are now reading the article Snow! The beast from the East arrives in London. With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/03/snow-beast-from-east-arrives-in-london.html
Title : Snow! The beast from the East arrives in London.
link : Snow! The beast from the East arrives in London.
news-today.world | I am sure many of you have read about 'the beast from the East' - the current winter conditions in Europe which have seen temperatures plunge below zero on the first day of spring, when we really should be seeing much warmer temperatures. Currently it is -5 outside in London and snowing heavily, we really should be experiencing temperatures of about +10 at this time of the year and London has not seen this much snow since 2009. In fact, it is not just the volume of the snow this time but the fact that the conditions are such that the snow has been allowed to accumulate - with daytime temperatures staying below zero for a few days. Normally what happens in London is that the snow melts within a few hours because temperatures are just not cold enough for it to stay frozen: London is a surprisingly warm city with temperatures stubbornly above zero during winter unlike say, Finland where they do experience a lot of winter snow. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll probably have seen loads of snow photos and videos - but in this blog post, I'll put on my hat as the geography teacher (I've got a degree in geography after all) and answer a few questions about the snow.
Why is it so cold in London now?
There is a great 1 minute BBC video to explain why this is happening and they've explained it in such a British way, with a mug of milky tea as an analogy to help everyone understand what is going on! I've managed to embed the video below:
How long is this current spell of cold weather?
It started snowing on Monday but it just wasn't cold enough for the snow to hang around - it melted pretty quickly on Monday despite a huge amount of it falling. It was really only by Tuesday night that temperatures did persistently stay well below zero for the snow to accumulate and as I am writing this, it is Thursday and the temperature has not risen above zero for at least 60 hours now, so the snow has been allowed to accumulate and all this time, it has been snowing steadily and heavily across most parts of the UK - we're expecting the fist signs of a thaw on Saturday or Sunday, so all in all, the cold snap will last just under a week: that's six days in total before temperatures recover into what will be more normal for this time of the year and the snow will finally melt - though most of Scotland will stay cold a bit longer.
What about the rest of the UK? Europe?
London is one of the warmest parts of the UK - snow usually affects places like Scotland and northern England. This is because it usually takes a northerly wind to bring snowy conditions down to the UK, but this time the wind is coming from the East rather than the North, so we're just as cold as Scotland at the moment. The Eastern coast of the UK has seen a lot of snow during this period of cold weather given how the moisture is picked up by the winds over the North Sea and dumped over the land it first encounters - but then we have had another weather system (named storm Emma) bringing a lot of warmer winds from the south-west over England and Wales. When storm Emma runs into the very cold sub-zero air that has been sitting over the UK, it turns to snow very quickly and we're expecting places like Southern Wales to see a significant amount of snow over the next 24 hours. As they would say there, mae hi'n bwrw eira yn drwm iawn heddiw!
Why is snow so rare in London?
It is because of the Jet Stream which brings a lot of much warmer, wetter air from the Atlantic ocean, even during winter - this means that whilst places of a similar latitude like Warsaw or Toronto get much, much colder winters with a lot of snow, London stays above zero during winter and your typical winter day would be around 5 to 8 degrees (usually with rain). Frost can occur during winter - that's when temperatures dip below zero at night and you get a thin layer of frozen condensation on most things overnight, but to get proper snow like what we're seeing right now, that happens once every few years. In fact, I've lived in London for 21 years and this kind of snow has only happened a handful of times - I don't think we've ever seen this much snow before in London, over so many days. I usually have to go to somewhere like Finland to find me some proper snow. But given the prevailing wind is from the West and South West, that means snow days in London are very rare and that's why we're making the most of it! So if you like snow and wanna see it whilst on holiday in Europe, don't expect to see any snow in London - you are probably best off heading to the high mountains.
Why is the UK so crap at dealing with snow?
Oh our public transport system is in complete meltdown at the moment with trains being cancelled, airports being shut, even whole road systems being shut because of the snow. Countries like Finland and Russia have to invest in much more expensive and sophisticated snow clearing technology - given just how much snow they experience every winter, life would just grind to a complete halt if they didn't deal with the snow efficiently. But in the UK, the logic has been, well it snows like that once every ten years or more, so let's just save the money on the equipment and take the hit of the snow induced chaos when Snowmageddon happens. Given that there are more pressing needs for the public transport system that will have a significant impact on improving the lives of commuters every single day of the year, investing in snow clearing equipment just doesn't make much sense given that you might use it once every few years at best and I stress, such equipment is very, very expensive. In Helsinki, that equipment is used practically every single day for five months a year to keep the public transport working, so it is a worthwhile investment. In London though, the cost-benefit analysis says, "don't invest in that expensive equipment and hope it doesn't snow, if it does, too bad. Oh we'll just take a gamble."
Why do people do stupid shit in the snow?
The cold weather tends to bring out the worst from people: idiots trying to walk over frozen lakes only for the ice the break and for them to fall into the frigid water to the emergency services having to rescue people from cars when the roads become impassable. It is quite shocking - the authorities will issue warnings to people to stay off the roads if heavy snow is forecast, but short of physically blocking off the roads with barriers, some idiots will always try to drive through the snow anyway and end up getting stuck in the snow. I think there should be a stupidity fine, like, "we'll rescue you but you'll have to pay a stupidity fine for wasting public resources - why did you try to drive when you were warned it was dangerous to do so?" But joking aside, people have died during this week as a consequences of road accidents, there are serious consequences to this snow-related stupidity. An innocent 7 year old girl was killed when a car skidded in icy conditions in Looe - she was so unfortunate, she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. She was just standing on the pavement when the car came flying her way. Did the driver set out to intentionally murder an innocent girl? No, but his/her stupidity and actions led to the death of that innocent girl anyway - that stupid driver ought to locked up in jail!
But just saying 'people are bloody stupid' doesn't quite explain the situation. Rather, we have a situation whereby the authorities are paying the price for having a culture of being too cautious when it comes to their weather-related warnings. We live in an age where we all have smart phones and can get the latest weather information and news instantly, there's no excuse for, "oh I had no idea it was going to snow today." Yeah we've had weather warnings in the past before for everything from snowstorms to floods to heatwaves which turned out to be no more than an anti-climax: what the authorities don't want to do is get it wrong, so they tend to err on the side of caution. Thus we have had warnings in the past for snow and people realized, oh it's only a bit of snow, it's no big deal, we'll just go on as normal - it'll be okay. It's this mentality which makes people ignore these weather warnings. How do you get the balance right though? How do you get people to actually take these warnings seriously and stay the fuck off the roads when they are clearly very icy and dangerous? I don't think we can blame the authorities for erring on the side of caution, but we need to seriously punish the people who refuse to heed weather warnings - if the police catch someone driving done an icy road, they should be arrested on the spot for dangerous driving and thrown in jail because as we've seen in the case of what happened in Looe, it's not just them putting their own lives in danger, they could easily kill innocent people as well.
How quickly will the snow melt?
Well there's currently quite a lot of snow out there, even right in the middle of central London where snow rarely ever settles. This is because the temperature is still around -1 in central London tonight and about -4 outside London; there is a huge urban heat island effect in London whereby the central areas are a few degrees warmer than the suburbs. However, all it takes is for the temperature to rise about zero for a few hours and the snow will melt pretty quickly, especially if there is rain which is expected over the weekend as the temperatures rise to 7 degrees by later on Sunday. The warmer rainwater will mix with the snow on the ground and that will make the snow disappear within an hour or so, you'll be amazed how fast that happens. So that's why we're all wrapping up warm and making the most of the wintry weather whilst the snow is still around for another day or two as it'll be a long time before we see snow like that again.
Is it possible for you to get snow even later in the year?
Yes indeed, though snow usually happens around the winter months of December to February, it can fall as late as mid-April. My former neighbours have even told me about snow falling in June in London one year - that's extremely rare of course. I've also seen snow as early as mid-October in London! It has only been so cold and snowy because of the unique situation that has brought in extremely cold air from Russia, but here's the thing you have to understand about weather in the UK: whether you get -10 or +10 degrees depends far more on the wind direction rather than the time of the year. If the wind is coming from the West, then it is bringing warm, wet air from the Atlantic ocean but if it is coming from the East, then temperatures will just plunge and we'll get snow. I remember one Valentine's day (14th February mind you) quite a few years ago when it reached 21 degrees and people were having romantic picnic's in the park then, we have also had very mild Christmases with temperatures hitting +15 in some years. So yeah, wind direction is determined by a complex interaction of weather systems that move around the North Atlantic and Europe, so it is actually really hard to predict what we will get at any time of the year and that's what makes our weather quite interesting.
OK so that's it from me. I've been skiing today - see my Instagram for photos and videos and hopefully, I'll be skiing again tomorrow afternoon because that's the last day for skiing. I suspect it will be too warm on Saturday and the snow may still be there, but it will turn muddy and slushy as temperatures slowly creep above zero. Mind you, even at 3 degrees, it isn't warm but that's warm enough to make snow turn into water the moment it gets above zero degrees. Compared to the spell of 'slightly cool' weather in Singapore last month, now this is proper winter weather! Many thanks for reading.
Why is it so cold in London now?
There is a great 1 minute BBC video to explain why this is happening and they've explained it in such a British way, with a mug of milky tea as an analogy to help everyone understand what is going on! I've managed to embed the video below:
How long is this current spell of cold weather?
It started snowing on Monday but it just wasn't cold enough for the snow to hang around - it melted pretty quickly on Monday despite a huge amount of it falling. It was really only by Tuesday night that temperatures did persistently stay well below zero for the snow to accumulate and as I am writing this, it is Thursday and the temperature has not risen above zero for at least 60 hours now, so the snow has been allowed to accumulate and all this time, it has been snowing steadily and heavily across most parts of the UK - we're expecting the fist signs of a thaw on Saturday or Sunday, so all in all, the cold snap will last just under a week: that's six days in total before temperatures recover into what will be more normal for this time of the year and the snow will finally melt - though most of Scotland will stay cold a bit longer.
What about the rest of the UK? Europe?
London is one of the warmest parts of the UK - snow usually affects places like Scotland and northern England. This is because it usually takes a northerly wind to bring snowy conditions down to the UK, but this time the wind is coming from the East rather than the North, so we're just as cold as Scotland at the moment. The Eastern coast of the UK has seen a lot of snow during this period of cold weather given how the moisture is picked up by the winds over the North Sea and dumped over the land it first encounters - but then we have had another weather system (named storm Emma) bringing a lot of warmer winds from the south-west over England and Wales. When storm Emma runs into the very cold sub-zero air that has been sitting over the UK, it turns to snow very quickly and we're expecting places like Southern Wales to see a significant amount of snow over the next 24 hours. As they would say there, mae hi'n bwrw eira yn drwm iawn heddiw!
Why is snow so rare in London?
It is because of the Jet Stream which brings a lot of much warmer, wetter air from the Atlantic ocean, even during winter - this means that whilst places of a similar latitude like Warsaw or Toronto get much, much colder winters with a lot of snow, London stays above zero during winter and your typical winter day would be around 5 to 8 degrees (usually with rain). Frost can occur during winter - that's when temperatures dip below zero at night and you get a thin layer of frozen condensation on most things overnight, but to get proper snow like what we're seeing right now, that happens once every few years. In fact, I've lived in London for 21 years and this kind of snow has only happened a handful of times - I don't think we've ever seen this much snow before in London, over so many days. I usually have to go to somewhere like Finland to find me some proper snow. But given the prevailing wind is from the West and South West, that means snow days in London are very rare and that's why we're making the most of it! So if you like snow and wanna see it whilst on holiday in Europe, don't expect to see any snow in London - you are probably best off heading to the high mountains.
Why is the UK so crap at dealing with snow?
Oh our public transport system is in complete meltdown at the moment with trains being cancelled, airports being shut, even whole road systems being shut because of the snow. Countries like Finland and Russia have to invest in much more expensive and sophisticated snow clearing technology - given just how much snow they experience every winter, life would just grind to a complete halt if they didn't deal with the snow efficiently. But in the UK, the logic has been, well it snows like that once every ten years or more, so let's just save the money on the equipment and take the hit of the snow induced chaos when Snowmageddon happens. Given that there are more pressing needs for the public transport system that will have a significant impact on improving the lives of commuters every single day of the year, investing in snow clearing equipment just doesn't make much sense given that you might use it once every few years at best and I stress, such equipment is very, very expensive. In Helsinki, that equipment is used practically every single day for five months a year to keep the public transport working, so it is a worthwhile investment. In London though, the cost-benefit analysis says, "don't invest in that expensive equipment and hope it doesn't snow, if it does, too bad. Oh we'll just take a gamble."
Why do people do stupid shit in the snow?
The cold weather tends to bring out the worst from people: idiots trying to walk over frozen lakes only for the ice the break and for them to fall into the frigid water to the emergency services having to rescue people from cars when the roads become impassable. It is quite shocking - the authorities will issue warnings to people to stay off the roads if heavy snow is forecast, but short of physically blocking off the roads with barriers, some idiots will always try to drive through the snow anyway and end up getting stuck in the snow. I think there should be a stupidity fine, like, "we'll rescue you but you'll have to pay a stupidity fine for wasting public resources - why did you try to drive when you were warned it was dangerous to do so?" But joking aside, people have died during this week as a consequences of road accidents, there are serious consequences to this snow-related stupidity. An innocent 7 year old girl was killed when a car skidded in icy conditions in Looe - she was so unfortunate, she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. She was just standing on the pavement when the car came flying her way. Did the driver set out to intentionally murder an innocent girl? No, but his/her stupidity and actions led to the death of that innocent girl anyway - that stupid driver ought to locked up in jail!
But just saying 'people are bloody stupid' doesn't quite explain the situation. Rather, we have a situation whereby the authorities are paying the price for having a culture of being too cautious when it comes to their weather-related warnings. We live in an age where we all have smart phones and can get the latest weather information and news instantly, there's no excuse for, "oh I had no idea it was going to snow today." Yeah we've had weather warnings in the past before for everything from snowstorms to floods to heatwaves which turned out to be no more than an anti-climax: what the authorities don't want to do is get it wrong, so they tend to err on the side of caution. Thus we have had warnings in the past for snow and people realized, oh it's only a bit of snow, it's no big deal, we'll just go on as normal - it'll be okay. It's this mentality which makes people ignore these weather warnings. How do you get the balance right though? How do you get people to actually take these warnings seriously and stay the fuck off the roads when they are clearly very icy and dangerous? I don't think we can blame the authorities for erring on the side of caution, but we need to seriously punish the people who refuse to heed weather warnings - if the police catch someone driving done an icy road, they should be arrested on the spot for dangerous driving and thrown in jail because as we've seen in the case of what happened in Looe, it's not just them putting their own lives in danger, they could easily kill innocent people as well.
How quickly will the snow melt?
Well there's currently quite a lot of snow out there, even right in the middle of central London where snow rarely ever settles. This is because the temperature is still around -1 in central London tonight and about -4 outside London; there is a huge urban heat island effect in London whereby the central areas are a few degrees warmer than the suburbs. However, all it takes is for the temperature to rise about zero for a few hours and the snow will melt pretty quickly, especially if there is rain which is expected over the weekend as the temperatures rise to 7 degrees by later on Sunday. The warmer rainwater will mix with the snow on the ground and that will make the snow disappear within an hour or so, you'll be amazed how fast that happens. So that's why we're all wrapping up warm and making the most of the wintry weather whilst the snow is still around for another day or two as it'll be a long time before we see snow like that again.
Is it possible for you to get snow even later in the year?
Yes indeed, though snow usually happens around the winter months of December to February, it can fall as late as mid-April. My former neighbours have even told me about snow falling in June in London one year - that's extremely rare of course. I've also seen snow as early as mid-October in London! It has only been so cold and snowy because of the unique situation that has brought in extremely cold air from Russia, but here's the thing you have to understand about weather in the UK: whether you get -10 or +10 degrees depends far more on the wind direction rather than the time of the year. If the wind is coming from the West, then it is bringing warm, wet air from the Atlantic ocean but if it is coming from the East, then temperatures will just plunge and we'll get snow. I remember one Valentine's day (14th February mind you) quite a few years ago when it reached 21 degrees and people were having romantic picnic's in the park then, we have also had very mild Christmases with temperatures hitting +15 in some years. So yeah, wind direction is determined by a complex interaction of weather systems that move around the North Atlantic and Europe, so it is actually really hard to predict what we will get at any time of the year and that's what makes our weather quite interesting.
OK so that's it from me. I've been skiing today - see my Instagram for photos and videos and hopefully, I'll be skiing again tomorrow afternoon because that's the last day for skiing. I suspect it will be too warm on Saturday and the snow may still be there, but it will turn muddy and slushy as temperatures slowly creep above zero. Mind you, even at 3 degrees, it isn't warm but that's warm enough to make snow turn into water the moment it gets above zero degrees. Compared to the spell of 'slightly cool' weather in Singapore last month, now this is proper winter weather! Many thanks for reading.
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You are now reading the article Snow! The beast from the East arrives in London. With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/03/snow-beast-from-east-arrives-in-london.html