Trapped in your house by an inch and half of snow in England? Wishing that Britain could be more like Poland when it comes to readiness to deal with winter? During the last few days, when new snow was sparse, the weather was settled and temperatures were low - Warsaw worked.But this afternoon, the heavens opened and vast quantities of new snow fell. On my way from the office to an evening meeting I could see that Warsaw's traffic was having problems. Despite plentiful warning that snow was on its way. The snow ploughs were nowhere to be seen, gridlocks began developing at junctions - and as on 17 December, the evening rush hour extended to very late in the evening.
The above photo was taken on ul. Puławska at 21:25. Four and half hours after most offices closed for business, and the main artery heading south out of Warsaw is still blocked.
UPDATE: ul. Karczunkowska, 07:00, Thursday 7 Jan. Snow cleared - asphalt black. Same on Puławska, and indeed all over Warsaw. The snowploughs were out in force overnight. Everything back to normal.
Here in Scotland, I have been telling anyone who will listen that the UK acutally does reasonably (not very) well in dealing with snow. Nobody believes me when I say every city from here to Moscow grinds to a halt when new snow falls
ReplyDeleteI'm perplexed by these news items I keep seeing about blocked roads and holdups. Are roads really blocked by snow more often than they used to be? Is it just a cheap way of filling air time during the news? Or is it just that there is a lot more traffic and therefore the effects of snow are more dramatic?
ReplyDeleteMy commute from home to school took me only fifty minutes on Thursday morning. The traffic density was noticeably lower.
ReplyDeleteJamie's kind of right - snowfall's been turned into sensation and feeds the media.