Snow (aka The End Of Civilisation)
Sunday,7 February 2010 by MattKesic
As January leaves us, it hopefully takes with it the snow, and therefore the ensuing disruption, it brought with it. Every year, as the Christmas season approaches, people start stating desires for it to snow on or around Christmas day; yet if it snows any time apart from late December, society seems to start to panic slightly. Unless you live in a house akin to a nuclear bunker, you will have seen the effects of the snow, whether it was by having time off College or slipping and falling on your face. Personally, neither of these have occured to me; perhaps that’s why i didn’t get involved in the pseudo-panic that many did? Or perhaps, crazy thought, the very reason this didn’t occur to me is because i didn’t go insane upon seeing some frozen rain? Now, admittedly, the snow in early January was slightly severe by our terms, but when you put it into context it really wasn’t anything to write home about.
As i sat in the coffee lounge of my college, staring up at the TV screens displaying BBC News, all i could see was reports on the weather. News reporters stood on the sides of motorways insisting the severity of the situation, despite the fact that plenty of cars were still driving past as normal. People i knew were doing one of two things; either coming into College and then complaining about the snow, or staying home out of apparently geniuine worry for their safety. As always seems to be the case when an inch of snow falls, my mum had the old radio out so she could hear about closures (regretfully this did not apply to me). Maybe it’s because it’s so rarely an occurance in the UK, but still, there is some serious hype around snow. The feverish furore that occurs in a night when it begins to snow re whether the snow will force schools & colleges to shut the following morning is amazing, and even i myself still get caught in it. What’s more amazing is how caught up everyone gets in it; schools and colleges close for small amounts of snow that people in other countries would not bat an eyelid at. People were sent home from my old high school because of apparent boiler issues; as far as any of us could tell, the boiler always DID have the power of a hamster running in a ball, because the only time they seemed to turn the radiators on was in the summer. Infact, the only time we were sent home was due to some kind of explosion which flooded the science block! This leads into my next point.
There are some who believe that the remarkable idea of it snowing in the winter season is a sign that global warming is going to wipe out the world a la The Day After Tomorrow. I’m no meteorologist, but personally, i think that’s mostly hyperbole. For starters, if snow at this time was something out of the ordinary, why is it that snow is pragmatically associated with Christmas constantly? Unless global warming is one very very slow process spanning centuries or something. The only conclusion i can gather is that because it’s so rare, when it actually happens it must mean something. I don’t know if they’re just being alarmist to champion their cause, or if they’re actually subconsciously caught up in the aforementioned panic.
There could, however, be some credence in what they’re saying; we all know global warming is probably going to get worse, and even as late as early Febuary last week, there was some more snowfall, though it deflated from code red status into minor inconvenience; personally that’s a label i think its predecessor deserved too. So perhaps there is something out of the ordinary when it comes to this snow, but regardless, i still don’t think it warrants the kind of overexaggeration that means peoples’ brains turn to mush and they start driving with their legs because they see a snowflake on their windscreen.
Tags: disruption, snow, weather