I've lived in cold winter climates for about 40% of my life, having lived in De Kalb, Illinois for one winter, Towson, Maryland for five, and East Lansing, Michigan for seven. This winter is my first "cold" winter in a city outside the United States. My readers in California might think they have a cold winter, but trust me, you don't. If the phrase "salting the sidewalk" doesn't mean anything to you, or creates an odd image in your head, you've never lived through a cold winter.
That being said, I am left to wonder if the people of Scotland know what it means to salt the sidewalk, because getting through the snow we had here a couple weeks ago left me thinking; this country has a long way to go, when it comes to winter preparedness.
The snow started on a Saturday night, less than an inch came down by my estimation. Nothing was done at that point, in terms of clearing the streets. Understandable, I thought - this kind of snow fall basically clears itself by people moving around in it. Then, the big storm came.
I would guess about 7-9 inches (I'm using odd numbers here, because I find that snow measurements are almost always in terms of even numbers, which has always bothered me). At this point, I began to wonder why nothing was being done to clear the snow - no plows anywhere to be seen, so one shoveling their walkways, and yes, no salting of sidewalks was going on. In fact, I didn't see a shovel for the next several days. I did get a lot of beautiful pictures though, as I walked around town, through the uncleared streets and sidewalks; you can see them here.
The snow fell for several days, a few hours each day. The airport closed (actually the airport was open for part of that time, but the runways were closed - the airport wanted all of us to know this). Lauren had a flight that was cancelled, and over the weekend, it was said that on Monday, things would be better.
Still no shovels. Still no plows, but somehow, things would be better. It wasn't.
The forecast changed, and even though schools opened on Monday morning, they were closed a few hours later. Snow fell on that Monday like it had not fallen during the entire storm. People were stuck on the major freeway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, for many, many hours. The freeway was eventually closed for 40 hours.
Still no shovels. Apparently there were plows somewhere (I would hope on that freeway), but I didn't see any.
What I did see was lots of people pulling around their kids in sleds. How is it that people can be prepared enough to have pull-sleds for their kids, but not a shovel? People were using brooms to try and clear the now frozen snow on their walkways and cars; a woman across the street was attempting to use a dustpan as a shovel.
Getting around was impossible because none of the streets has been cleared, and, of course, no salting of sidewalks had happened. The city was now covered with a 6-inch coat of ice. The city was virtually shut down for a week.
People were mad now; they were calling for the transport minister to step down (he did a few days later), they were complaining how there were not enough grit bins in neighborhoods so people could put grit on the sidewalk (I've learned that gritting sidewalks is done here, as opposed to salting them). The army was called in to Edinburgh, to help deal with the ice-coated city. The only ones who didn't seem to care were the neighborhood cats, who continued to be around as they had when there wasn't any snow, continued to walk along their "cat path" in our front garden, except now the path was through snow.
the cat path, after the snow started melting
I sat at home and thought to myself, why didn't anyone start clearing the snow as it was falling? Why was there this wait to start to do anything?
When the snow started to melt, it melted quickly. Slush filled the streets, big pools of water everywhere. The snow cat someone made in our back yard turned into nothing more than a clump of snow, and our front garden was green again within a couple of days.
In the days when the snow was melting, I was talking to someone. I said I didn't understand why no one tried clearing the streets earlier, why there was this wait for the snow to stop before doing anything. She looked at me in this way; in a way of someone hearing about something amazing for the first time, and said "I hadn't thought about that. That would have been a really good idea".
Maybe I should become the transport minister because Edinburgh has a ways to go, when it comes to dealing with snow.
"Snurgh" hahaha! Also, this: "I find that snow measurements are almost always in terms of even numbers, which has always bothered me" is just reason 1,537,211 that I love you.
ReplyDelete(1) Yes, I really like the spelling "snurgh"; (2) sleds are more fun than shovels; (3)I thought Scotland was metric--how about 17-23 cm of snow? (4)do YOU have a shovel? What do YOU do to clear snow?
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