World of Chig   

9.2.07
Gridlock

On a good day, in the Summer, I can drive from my house in Birmingham to Brighton in under four hours. I can be most of the way to Edinburgh in that time too. Tonight, it has taken me that long (3h 45m, to be precise) to drive home from work; a ten mile journey that normally takes 25-35 minutes. It's gridlock city and I am in a foul mood.

The 'funny' thing is, we had excellent advance notice from the Met Office of yesterday's snow, which turned out to be a little less than expected, but the roads were still gritted, traffic stayed away, no problems. There was no more snow forecast for today, In fact, a Five Live reporter confirmed at lunchtime today what I had thought earlier; the Met Office didn't predict any snow across the West Midlands until it was already snowing, about 10:00 this morning. Great! In the end we've had more snow today than yesterday. None of the ten miles of A roads on my journey home have been gritted today by Sandwell or Birmingham councils, so it's a nightmare out there. Cars are crawling and sliding all over the place, in rutted ice, or snow, or slush. It took me over an hour to do the last mile, nearest to the city centre. The constant radio travel reports which kept butting into my radio listening were referring to 25 mile traffic jams, then 40 mile traffic jams, and stationary traffic between ten junctions on Midlands motorways. We're really not very good at coping with a bit of snow, are we?

It's not the first time I've wondered this, but what is the point of weather 'forecasting'? It seems a very hit and miss occupation, to say the least.

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