Good luck & keep us posted. It still amazes me when something happens how unprepared people are. I live in Minnesota when we get the first big snowfall people are on the news buying shovels, because they don't have one. Others no gloves or hats.
I have enough food at home to last more than a few days. Maybe I'd want to pick up some perishables but if I couldn't make it to the store no big deal.

How are you all doing over there? Sounds brutal.



http://www.emirates247.com/news/world/at...-12-03-1.324411

At least 60 killed by cold snap across Europe

London's Gatwick airport reopened on Friday, but others including London Heathrow and Glasgow warned of more cancellations and delays

By Agencies

Published Friday, December 03, 2010

...Temperatures plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus four Fahrenheit) in Braemar, Scotland, while Britain struggled to get back to its feet after days of transport chaos.

Estimates are that around one quarter of all petrol stations in the UK will be empty by this Monday. That should prove to be interesting. Scenes in Dundee resemble a Lowry Painting or the scenes from 'The Day after tommorrow' after they warned folks not to leave the Library or they will die in the storm. Only main routes within the town are barely passable and in out lying areas are still suffering shortages such as bread and milk. The local Dundee City council are basically a disaster area waiting to happen, well I think it already is a disaster area with Civil Defense volunteers now taking over from the social services responsible for services for the elderly such as meals on wheels. They apparently shut up shop for a couple of days during the week. The post has not been delivered for the last week, apparently it is too much of a struggle for the Royal Mail which contrasts quite sharply to the efforts made by the newspaper delivery boys. Oh and a work colleague apparently died after falling on the untreated icy entrance steps of where she works. Basically its a complete and utter shambles. The Dundee Council policy of maintaining self gritting roads appears to failed spectacularly. It is something like FEMA deciding not to come into work that day because its cold outside, and I might get wet and slip in the snow.

Another week or two of cold weather in the UK will most likely see an unprecedented crisis despite the fact that the news media is ignoring the situation because only a couple of inches of snow fell within the M25 corridor around London.

And I'm sat at Leuchars, with:-

2 snow ploughs fitted to dump trucks.
2 JCB 4CX's
1 Case Tractor with half of the military snow blades fitted, just waiting to go.

And Dundee don't want military help, apparently they can cope. My arse. Lets see what happens when the next drop happens this week.

LOL. The snow and ice on the main roads within Dundee needed to be cleared, the problem was that the Dundee city council took 10 days to figure out where to put it once it had been cleared and transported. The snow quickly piled up at Blackscroft in the city centre after being transported there by truck (a stones throw from the entrance to Victoria Dock). Apparently, the story goes it took Dundee Council 10 days to finally allow the snow and ice to be dumped into the river Tay. Apparently the contractors had to gain permission from the City Council for the snow and ice, which was contaminated with salt, sand and grit so as not to create an environmental catastrophe within the river. Apparently no one was willing to stand up and take responsibility for the decision and no-one had the common sense to realise that there was already large amounts of salt and sand already in the river.

There was quite a funny scene in the town centre last week though as a single Dundee Council worker was observed working, cleaning up the cigarette butts from the ice covered pavements as folks looked on in disgust.

The twats at the Dundee city council have a long history of corrupt incompetence and total indifference to their constituents, being more concerned with V&A museums and waterfront developments (hopefully to be completed by 2030. ) rather than ending the policy of keeping self gritting roads in place. It took them 6 years to re cobble Albert square, about the same time it took to build Dubai. Time for a Youtube 'Hitler gets bad news' video, I think.

I make no claim to understand the local issues; I hope everyone comes out all right.

I confess, also, that I'm watching this thread with a large bowl of popcorn at hand. (No offence intended.)

Continue!

Ha Ha you couldn't make it up.

Set phasers to malky.

Doug, just a little background.

51 (Scottish) Brigade of the British Army was put on standby along with the rest of the military in Scotland to clear snow, rescue old ladies cats, move paramedics around in landrovers etc etc.

Dundee council, where Am Fear lives, issued a press release stating they had no need for military assistance. I'm at a major military establishment, 5 miles from Dundee waiting still to be stood down from 6 hours notice to move. There is more snow forecast for this week, and we all go on leave this Friday.

And the snow is back. Fun and games again.

We had more thundersnow again yesterday (I thought thundersnow events were mean't to be quite rare). The couple of inches we got today was actually quite welcome as this has actually helped getting around. The snow has made walking over the 2-3 inches of solid ice covering the pavements a lot easier.

Lots of BBC news media etc on the TV (the Christmas Caribbean destination crowd are a little upset at the moment having to bed down on hard floors with a space blanket at LHR), apparently it has snowed down in the south of England as well and are expecting another 6-8 inches tomorrow on top of the 4-6 inches they got yesterday. Hmm a foot of snow on the south of England, now thats what I call fun and games. I guess the news media shouldn't have got so smug about Scotland grinding to a halt.

I would expect to see major shortages of fuel (especially domestic fuel oil, which is currently at a critical state), food etc and even salt and grit as many local authorities are now running short, i.e. more than half way through their stockpiles within 3 weeks and the winter hasn't even meant to have started yet.

The supermarkets down in the south of England, will probably feel like a TEOTWAWKI event just before Christmas with all the foklks carrying out their mad shopping rush to cover the 2 days whilst the UK shuts down.

Hopefully I'll get some snow shoes for Christmas for when the salt and grit runs out in mid January.

The Courier is already reporting Fife and Dundee councils are cutting their grit with sand to eke it out a bit further, and are running out at an alarming rate.

British Gas have issued a gas balancing order I believe as demand rises through the roof.

Some England based courier companies refuse to deliver anything to Scotland in case their drivers get stuck.

We had a guy and a JCB come and scrape the estate I live on and all he did was scrape the new snow off, down to the ice . The local council warned him if he damaged the road surface he would be liable for its repair.

The world is totally mad.

But, bless my papergirl she got through before I was even up this morning. Must be Christmas tip time lol.