Winter Weather Watch

9.01.2010

Recent national news has included the following articles ‘Special Report: Frozen Britain’, ‘How Britain is struggling to cope with a blast from the Arctic that has brought in a mini ice age across the country’ and ‘Scotland suffers sub-zero chill’. Newspapers produced further east comprised far fewer articles concerning the extreme weather which Europe is currently experiencing; all those that did had a slightly different focus. ‘Kyiv is under snow: city is on verge of transport collapse’, ‘Weather deaths pass 100’, ‘Russia in Ice’ and ‘Titanic fears for Greenland cruise ships’.

It seems that whilst the UK is struggling to keep businesses and airports operating and educational establishments functioning under inches of snow, the rest of Europe is fighting against more adverse weather conditions under feet of snow. Berkshire, one of the hardest hit areas in the UK, received more than 40cm of snow in one week alone and consequently experienced temporary cuts in water and electricity supplies across the region. Thousands across the UK have been working from home, and those that have been managing to get into the office often face difficult and arduous journeys returning home afterwards. A prime example is of one waitress who trudged through snow for 14 miles in County Durham as all the roads in her area had been closed.

In Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, where cold weather and thick snow is a frequent occurrence, local populations have had to take more caution this year as weather conditions throughout Europe have become more extreme. In regions where a typical winter may crack pipes and cause overhead lines to collapse, this year is no exception. Measures already in place have allowed life to continue almost as normal in most large urban areas, so long as people wear thicker clothes as they make the daily trip to local wells, are prepared to wade through deeper snow whilst walking to work, have access to more wood to burn on roadside bonfires at bus shelters, and take up temporary snow shovelling jobs at airports and with local councils.

Recent extreme weather, however, has brought new worries to these areas. Cruise and cargo ships journeying across the North Atlantic Ocean and the Norwegian Sea are continually issued with fresh warnings concerning potentially lethal icebergs, as oceanographers predict this to be one of the worst winters since 1912. Local councils and the general public in Ukraine have been working at full capacity to clear the ice and snow, as they experience some of the heaviest snowfalls since records began, with areas receiving six feet and more at snow. At times, the only solutions have been to tunnel through the ice to allow access to homes and on roads. Whilst in parts of Russia, cities have experienced several ice storms, covering large areas with thick, smooth black ice, although Moscovites have taken advantage of this by hosting the largest ice sculpture festival in this region for decades.

Whether the extreme weather we are experiencing is a sign of Global Warming, as the Met Office claims, or whether it heralds the start of another mild Ice Age as last seen at the start of the 20^th century, one thing is certain. Winters have become colder in recent years and as all signs indicate a continuation of this adverse weather in the future, local governments and populations need to start getting better prepared to cope with cold, snowy winters before they become much worse.