01 March 2018 by Roy Preece
Snow is causing problems again. All those little snowflakes add up to something quite big!
Some years ago we had several very snowy winters when drifting snow was a big problem for drivers. The actual snowfall might not be heavy, but the wind picks up the snow as it blows across the fields and then is slowed down as it passes through the roadside hedges; as the wind slows it drops the snow neatly and frustratingly onto the roads. The special snow barriers you may see in some exposed hilly districts are some way back from the roads, so that the snow is dropped beside the roads and not on them. This is the road to Oxford from my village, pictured some years ago after it had been cleared by snow ploughs, which took four days.
At that time Oxford did not have much snow, while scarcely 20 miles away on the Cotswold Hills we had conditions as shown here, so I received no sympathy when I phoned up to say that I couldn’t get into work for a few days because of the snow. “Snow! What snow?” Later I made my point by pinning this picture on my office door.
