ekimeno

Woke up this morning and saw a complete white out with snow - kind of shocking as it hardly ever snows in London. Usually we only get a night-time sprinkling once per winter, but this is a real snow day. The roads are covered in thick black snow-grunge - no way I'm considering riding in this!

So I went down to the my local underground station - tube lines suspended - you'll have to catch a bus. Que for people waiting for buses extends for maybe 100-meters. I walk back home...calling in another London shut down.

Per Olav

Man, there's like 5 centimetres of snow, and London shuts down? Guess it doesn't snow there very often.. It's 50 centimetres of snow here.

ekimeno

Once every 3-4 years we get this amount of snow and London just can't cope with it. It's all right - I get to chill at home for the day!

filtersweep

why are the tube lines shut down?

ekimeno

Quite a few lines are running, but my line was partly suspended for the following reasons:

baj32161

Wuss!!!

J/K...I wouldn't be out in that either. We are having sub-zero wind chills here with temps in yhe teens and twenties, with a snowstorm on its way for Tuesday so I am feeling your pain.

Cheers,

Brian

draxine

haha I was just thinking about whether or not to try to make it into town too. On one hand it's probably not going to be pleasant, but I've never cycled in the snow before and that part of me is tempted to rise to the challenge...

mrfish

I was looking forward to taking my new Pinarello for a ride to work. Instead I will be sipping tea and looking into my fake coal fire all morning while answering emails from the sofa. Things are so bad or people here are so lazy that nobody's even dialled in to the calls I had in my diary.

I did see 3 crazy people riding their MTBs to work through 3" of brown slush. Didn't look fun.

Johnny_Monkey

What sort of Pinarello do you have?

ekimeno

I just hope this snow doesn't stick otherwise I'm going to have to get some tyres with metal spikes/studs. Either that or get some skies - cross country style

jfblodi

Wow. That reminds me of all those winters I spent in Oregon. Nothing like that here in suburban NorCal, though, unless you go up to the mountains.

BTW, don't you mean queue?



Oh yeah.

patentcad

Here in NY I'd be riding on my MTB with a rear fender. The real danger is ICE. So unless it's WELL below freezing, the road salt takes care any icing issues. But maybe in London the road crews don't HAVE road salt to put down. That might be a problem. Do they even have snowplow equipped trucks in London??

Shouldn't it be rainy and foggy there in Februrary? That's bizarre. But it must snow farther north in England, the lake district for example.

ekimeno

They don't have snow ploughs round here - maybe up north. The extent of dealing with snow and ice in London is to grit the roads - I think its a mixture of gravel and salt that gets poured over the roads and pavements.

If it does snow in London it usually does so in late Jan, early Feb - coldest time of the year here. It will be raining in March-May...more than likely.

jccaclimber

That little snow and it's an issue? I remember the year in Columbus Oh that the city decided to sell its snow trucks and then got 8 inches the next winter. I got a snow day or two off school but nothing else shut down.

roadwarrior

Yeah, I was on Arsenal's site this morning and was chuckling over these photos...

It does not snow much in London. It's a pretty big deal when it does. It doesn't snow a bunch in Belgium (where I lived), either, except in the mountains (like the Ardennes) so it pretty much messes everything up when it does.

Go Gunners...hopefully it's all gone before the weekend's games. They play Wigan on Sunday.

Thank goodness for Fox Soccer Channel and Goltv..

roadwarrior

Here's another...

Cleaning up the field will be a chore...

LanceFanBoy

Haha Buffalo got like 2-3 feet this weekend depending on where you live in Buffalo.

iNewton

*snickers snickers* wimp.

patentcad

You can tell they don't get snow in a place where they think 'snow plow' is spelled 'snow plough' : )

Or is that some British thing that's over my NY twit head? Is 'WOW!' spelled 'WOUGH!' in England??

jamiewilson3

What area of London are you in / the pictures taken?

timmhaan

yeah, but london is very different from columbus, oh. first of all, they only get snow once in a while. so, they don't have much equipment and crew just waiting for it to happen. it probably takes a very long time to clear the roads there. and, in a big already congested city, the cumulative affect of everyone going slower tends to grind everything to a halt. add the train delays and other public transport problems and it makes it much worse.

sounds like a great day to take off!

slowandsteady

Now, I see why we won the American Revolution. Wimps.

Momentum

I rode to work on my Merckx track bike this morning - not all of us are wimps

ekimeno

Hardcore


...sorry - hardcaw

SDRider

That looks more like Nebraska than London...well, except for the double deck bus.