Two Countries a World of Difference

As is well known the British are obsessed with the weather. Indeed one national “newspaper “ continually has front-page leads promising weather Armageddon. It will either be too wet, too cold or too hot or even all three. I suppose that part of this is because that the weather can vary over extremely short distances. Last week for instance at home it was sunny, while five miles inland it was covered with snow and ice.

So while reading the Guardian website I was not surprised to see a long article warning of extreme weather, promising massive disruption following five to 10 centimetres of snow and extreme freezing conditions. We are already being conditioned to all public transport being cancelled, schools shut, and hospitals overwhelmed.

Then suddenly this is put in perspective by the article just underneath. This is where the Mayor of New York is making emergency preparations of for bad weather that will shortly hit the North East Seaboard. So wait for it, New York is expecting two feet of snow with 70 mph winds. This is almost between six to ten times the amounts that Scarborough is expecting with temperatures way colder.

So why this difference in the reaction to the weather? Let me tell you a story. I had a friend who lived in Memphis, Tennessee which one winter was paralysed by a very small snowfall. I asked him why, and he said that they had only a small number of snow ploughs. Again I asked why? Well it obvious really, why would the good citizens of Memphis invest in snow clearing equipment when they only experience even a small snowfall once every ten years. It would not be logical indeed, so they grin and bear it for that one-day in 3600, excuse my rough maths. I suppose that if you want to get analytical this would be called cost benefit analysis, the cost of providing the infrastructure needed to tackle the snow in Memphis would be out of all proportion the benefit.

So Scarborough may well suffer “snow chaos” later this week. In practice this will mean that side roads are impassable for a day as will be some of the high routes out of the town, it is highly unlikely the be cut off for any more than two hours. Some local schools will be closed, but this will be mainly because teachers do not tend to live locally to their schools rather than the pupils failing to get there. But if the local council were honest with the electoral as to the cost of negating even this inconvenience nobody would agree with meeting the bill. This is particularly as Scarborough has not seen significant snowfall for almost two years.

However I am attending a beer tasting evening with my son in Leeds on Thursday evening, so I am all in favour of the gritters and ploughs keeping that road to Leeds open no matter the cost. Self interested – Yes.