London hit by giant snowstorm
January 8th, 2003
London got hit by a giant snowstorm, the largest snowfall there in 12 years. The storm practically shut the whole city down. (Hat tip: Tom. Yes, you got another mention in my blog, don’t you feel special now?)
How much snow would cause this kind of shutdown? 2 feet? A foot? No, 2 inches! That’s right, two inches were recorded in Central London, and 3-4 inches in surrounding areas.
Before we laugh at the poor Brits too much, though, let’s just remember that we in Montreal get the highest urban snowfall in North America on average, and we know what to do with it. We have snow removal services, salt trucks, snow tires, and snowplows. Most people in London don’t even have so much as a snow brush handy in their cars. I bet most of them don’t even know what one is!
Update: Damian e-mailed me to inform me that I was wrong in stating that Montreal has the highest urban snowfall in North America. According to Statistics Canada, Montreal gets an annual average snowfall of 214.2cm. That puts us in seventh place in Canada, behind Ottawa, Halifax, Fredericton, St. John’s, Charlottetown, and Quebec City. Whoops. I guess the statistics I was reading were off . . . or maybe they were referring to urban centres of above a certain population (Montreal is by far the largest of all the cities listed above).
London, however, gets such a small amount of snow on an annual basis that I couldn’t even find a published average.
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What is a snow brush?
Come to Montreal and I’ll give you one. But you have to clean my car the rest of the winter
Actually, Quebec City, Charlottetown and St. John’s get more snow than Montreal. (See http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/phys08a.htm)
I’d love to see what would happen if Sydney ever got snow fall. Melbourne had snow about three years ago and it was big national news – probably about 1cm of snow.
Whats a snow brush? , isn’t the snow for snow ball fights , day off UK conspiricy
all train drivers playing snow men with their kids , now who’s the dummy 