In London, snow brings chaos and cheer
Posted: Monday, February 02, 2009 12:00 PM
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London, England
By Jennifer Carlile, msnbc.com reporter
London on a winter’s day evokes images out of a Dickens novel – quaint and covered in snow – which makes one wonder how a few inches of the white stuff could bring this world-class city of 8 million to a standstill more than 150 years after the author penned "A Christmas Carol."
The images of Scrooge awakening on Christmas morning, watching residents "scraping the snow from the pavements in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses" are more fairytale than reality to modern-day Londoners.
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| Jennifer Carlile/msnbc.com |
| Becky Prince, Claire Shropshall, Sally Reid and Susie Webb, pictured left to right, pose with their snow man, woman and dog in Clapham Common, southwest London. |
But Monday morning brought the heaviest snowstorm in 18 years, and Dickensian scenes of the "mad delight to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snowstorms" came to life for millions.
Along with the delight came the delays, and then the cancellations.
"We queued for an hour but we couldn’t get into the Tube," said Becky Prince, as she and three friends made snow men (and a snow dog) in the park next to Clapham Common subway station in southwest London.
At rush hour, a neat, single-file line wrapped out of the station and around the block for a few hundred feet, barely inching along as frantic residents called and texted each other to see which train lines were still running – the consensus being that just one, the Victoria line, was operating somewhat normally.
All London buses were withdrawn from service due "to adverse weather and dangerous driving conditions," according to Transport for London’s Web site, whose phone line was constantly busy. And snow drifts quickly built up in the bus lanes.
Word soon spread that the key link to the center of the city, the last-standing Tube line, had gone down too. One man flopped down behind the train station, making snow angels in the fresh powder. Another took to "performing surgery" on a snowman’s head, while dozens packed into the closest Starbucks and joked about heading to the pub instead of the office.
‘Snow Armageddon’
"England is not made for snow," said Prince, a 23-year-old who works in the insurance industry as she defended the snowmen from an onslaught of snowballs tossed by a group of guys who were also happily stranded in the park. By this point, dozens of snowmen were springing up around the place, along with a snow couch and TV set with twig antennas and the words "Snow Armageddon" etched into its screen.
"We can’t cope with the heat in the summer and we can’t cope with the cold in the winter; we’re just not used to having actual seasons," said friend Claire Shropshall.
Snow isn’t the only thing to trouble the subway here. Fall’s "extra-slippery" leaves and track- "warping" summer heat can also cause disruptions.
Driving was also hazardous without snowplows or enough salt or sand to cover the streets. "There’s not enough grit in the whole city," said Shropshall.
And Heathrow Airport was forced to close its runways and cancel all of the flights out of the airport until evening.
The inclement conditions lead many workers to abandon their commute. In Clapham the Café Nero coffee shop was closed – presumably because not enough staff could get into work. And at the Sainsbury’s supermarket, employees said only about 40 percent of the staff had arrived by mid-morning.
"I left at 7:30a.m. and didn’t get in until 10a.m.," said Suzanne Leaver, describing a journey that usually takes 20 minutes. "Now that’s dedication!" she said with a smile.
With deliveries cancelled and people stocking up on food for their snow holiday, a few shelves stood empty. In the usually bulging milk aisle, only the goat and soy variety were left.
Despite all the closures and the chaos, one thing’s for sure: Britons always love to talk about the weather. From the line for the Tube to the one for the supermarket cash registers, strangers chatted excitedly telling their tales of woe. Giving such a weather-obsessed country a day to natter about nothing else has let them drop the stiff upper lip and pick up a snowball instead.
"It’s a lot of fun," Becky Prince and her friends said in unison.
