How are you doing in the snow?
 

Worst I've seen for a long while. Took me 2.5 hours to get to and from work as the trains were so bad on top of the 50% service due to a strike, but I had to get into the office otherwise, I would have stayed at home. Thursday night I spent 5 hours until 2.00am on the hill I live on helping people. We had 6 inches of snow on top of ice. After hours of pushing cars, I took the executive decision to close the road, a main road through the town. I found some cones and closed the bottom then ran up to the top of the hill and put some full bin bags over the road. We had about 20 cars and buses and vans abandoned in various random places on the road, it was completely blocked and even 4x4's were slipping 10 metres before bashing into the kerb. We then helped as many as possible get off the road, but most just had to leave their cars and walk. Amazing the amount of people who tried to move the cones and wouldn't listen or even look at the mess they could see in front of them but insisted they could make it - they didn't, unlucky. Got some real abuse from people. No gritting on a major road and a steep hill at that, don't know what the council plan was but it didn't work. Snow hasn't gone and more over the weekend. More again today on top of the poor conditions and it's like an ice rink again. I moved my car off the hill as it was only luck that it was not hit by the sliding cars. I put it in the local car park that had 6 inches of snow and is on a hill. It took me 20 minutes to get 20metres as it's an auto with fat tyres and even although it's got 4WD, if I put it in drive and still with my foot on the brake, just the power of the engine ticking over made it go forward with my foot still on the brake, so I had the mad situation of taking my foot off the brake to lurch forward in order to get control not knowing if it will stop. Plus, with the wheels on full lock to the right, it went straight on, crazy situation trying to get into a parking space. M25 is solid, so my town is near static. There is just one track of tyre lines but when the traffic dies down, the snow will land and make my road unpassable again. There will be a lot of people stuck in their cars tonight. You know that advice you hear but never take notice of cause it won't ever happen to you? Take it! Don't drive and if you do, take a shovel, a bag of grit, a flask of something hot, food, warm clothes, waterproofs, boots/wellies, a blanket, phone charger for the car etc etc.

Looks much worth up north.

WeeJohnyB

Falling quite heavily for the last couple of hours in South Oxfordshire. We were scheduled to have our cooling tower at work cleaned today but it didn't happen as they didn't turn up, trouble is we have to turn everything off before they arrive, now we can't get things back on as the water temp is to low. All this is costing us thousands in lost income and on top of that I ended up leaving work 90 minutes later than I should which put me on the tail end of all the traffic and very slow moving traffic at that. Stuck behind somebody in a Clio that wouldn't go above 15mph and they left a nice safe gap of about 200 to 300 yards (yes yards) to the car in front. Took me 35 minutes to cover the 3.5 miles from works main gate to the A34 and then they went a different direction so the remaining 14 miles home took me 20 minutes.
Mre fun and games in the morning no doubt just getting to work, then the real fun and games will start

Still its the first time in the last 5 years I haven't arranged the cleaning of the cooling tower, now they know why I avoid the winter months

:) http://www.ducatisportingclub.com/sh...t=81280&page=2 :)


Chris:burn:

Not so grim in this part of the North.:) Some areas a few miles away have had a lot more.

Nowt much around here, about an inch. Not bad enough to pull the ABS fuse anyway, but enough to have a play on where it's frozen.

The tyres fitted to 99% of vehicles on UK roads just don't work on snow & ice, even on the chelsea tractors, hence the whole job grinds to a halt.

Don't fancy the trackday on snow at the Nurburging then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9SAYvGJsw

About 1 min 40 in, the funs begins.............even in a beetle coupe:frog:

In the sticks up here it's DIY gritting on the hills, the council just leave a few little heaps at the roadside so you can sort yourself out if need be.

Ray.

snowed in the office for the second time this year! This time, I decided to wait and see if teh traffic improved - it didnt! So got the train back to Fareham from Basingstoke and left the car, as did loads of others

last had a text at 19.15 from a collegue who left the office at 14.45 and was less than half a mile up the road on the one way out of the estate! Oh dear...

Alton area in total chaos.....Hampshire County Council obviously thought it would be a good idea to let the snow fill all the potholes that they left from the Summer :mad: Not been able to get out of my drive since the snow on Friday, no gritters....nothing... plain incompetence t*****s :mad: :mad:

Quite bad around the New Forrest
Fancy a lap of the IOM tt course ?http://www.gov.im/tourism/webcam/webcam.aspx?webcam=6
Snowmobile over the mountain perhaps?:D

I was expecting it to be a nightmare, given the reports of the M25, M4, etc being gridlocked.
It was snowing as I headed up the A3M from Portsmouth, but not really settling. Some of the back roads are bit on the entertaining side even in a range rover, but they were all passable.

I'm looking for an excuse not to go to work tomorrow, but its not snowed here yet. Just my luck ;)

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..."

Where the heck do all you lot live? Not even a flutter of snow down here in portsmouth... bright sunshine, bone dry roads, just a bit chilly. Might get the r6 out this afty.

And just to add salt (pardon the pun) into our wounds even more Nick, I bet all your highways depots have mountains of salt in them too.........Must be like heaven :lol:

Gc

No snow here

I left work in Chiswick at 4:15, headed through Ealing where the snow was already falling, and promptly had someone run into the back of me (no damage though).
Made it onto the A40 which wasn't too bad and onto the M25 in the roadworks. Still snowing but not bad, made it to J20, A41 only about 15 minutes later than usual.
Set off up the A41 and instantly realised I was in trouble, road untreated, pure ice with snow falling on top. Getting up the hills was nigh-on impossible. Made it as far as the Hemel Hempsted turn and dropped down into Hemel which was total gridlock. Spent 3 hours getting through Hemel and finally was on my way up the old A41 to Berkhamstead, and although it was now 9:30ish, and the road was frozen, I was making good progress, up to 15mph at times.
Finally got to Cow Roast, 3 miles South of Tring around 10:15, I could almost smell home from there, and then the fun really started. There was one last hill up to Tring... and no-one was getting up that! Luckily there were 2 sets of guys in 4x4s towing people up the hill, just a case of waiting to get to the front of the queue and getting a tow....
Finally made it home at 11:40.... 7hr 25 for a journey I can normally do in 1hr15 ar rush hour, or 50 mins at other times...
Needless to say, I'm not in work today! Lucky really as I'm told the A41 is still closed!
Cheers
Martin

Great way to spend a day off......don't know why I bothered as the hill outside is still impassable :(

not with that car Dementor!! As I've found out twioce thuis year, BMW's best joke is their RWD system in the ice and snow. Forget it, leave it where it is and walk is the only solution!!

got the train in today, picked up the car and headed back....30 mins, 2 helpers and a shovel I got out of the car park and onto the road. Abandoned cars everywhere still in Basingstoke!

about 30 slept at the office last night; one girl left at 16.30 and got 5 miles to the nursery to pick up her daughter at 22.30 and stayed there the night; another came back for his car at 21.00 and the 4 miles home arrived at 01.00

got my laptop now so think I may miss the office until the new year!!

I am thinking it has something to do with the temperature hovering around zero, so the UK has this constant thawing and freezing to produce dificult conditions.

Here in Germany we had 30cm of Snow over the weekend and the temperature was -17'C on Saturday. The roads are only ploughed as salt doesnt work at these extreme temperatures, but even so there were no delays, everyone turned up at work on Monday and in conversation it hardly featured as a topic of any interest.

Unfortunately my poor English body couldnt cope, I cycled to work and the extreme cold on my throat has given me laryngitis. No carol singing for me tomorrow

Merry Christmas

I recall the days when we had a Unimog Snowplough up here at Harwell site, it did a great job of keeping the local roads in and out of the area clear, but alas cut-backs in recent years means it is no more

Now it just cost them people not turning up for work during heavy snowfall,
Back last Easter time when we had several inches of Snow only 2 of us out of 28 made it in

I decided to work from home today, glad I did as they closed the M27 this morning so couldnt have got there anyway! But its still freezing everywhere, so cant imagine Bainsgtoke is that much better than when I limped out of it yesterday

bnow if I'd have still had the Bimmer GS I would have ridden to work....

Well I've never driven a snowplough variant but some of my fondest memories of the Army are driving the Unimogs. Especially taking them off-road, they could go places our Landrovers couldn't because they had so much extra ground clearance. I had to dig one out of a stream by myself on my drivers course ... but it was 30 odd degrees, beautiful blue skies and not a cloud in sight. The rest of the course sat on and watched and hurled abuse at me and a few rocks :D