Monday, February 02, 2009

white power

"Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures across large parts of the country", reported a calm voice betraying just a hint of excitement this morning when the radio woke me up. I looked through my kitchen window and was treated to a world of white. Where Japanese knotweed had pollulated without mercy, turning a modest backyard into a dense jungle resistant to all eradication efforts, loads of snow had now buried everything, sucked life from the garden and imposed the austere rule of a Nordic god. I made two cups of coffee and went to sit down with breakfast.

On any other day, the bustle of rush hour traffic, the droning of engines and the murmuring of tires, enters through my living room windows, muffled but unmistakable, and brings the city home. A bus goes by every few minutes. Today, in contrast, it was eerily quiet. Only the shrill voices of kids could be heard. Screaming with joy and sometimes shouting with effort, the little ones were engaged in snowfights and wild chases over treacherous ground, clearly overcome by the extraordinary scene.

While the steaming coffee fogged up my windows, the BBC continued its focus on the weather, obviously fascinated by what was going on. Heathrow had just shut its second runway and was now closed. City airport was also closed and so was Luton. Stansted had come back to live but was experiencing major delays, ditto Gatwick. Ten of the eleven underground lines were experiencing some sort of problem, and no buses were running at all.

In light of the harsh conditions, people were warned not to drive. The streets of London were slick with snow covering icy patches. With no snow tires and hardly any winter driving experience, letting drivers loose would lead to immediate and complete disaster. Take the train, people were urged. Dutifully, they went to check schedules and expected delays on the websites of British Rail and the various regional train operators and, reported the BBC with incredulity, promptly brought down the servers. Public transport, a celebrated and affectionately reviled system that normally transports six million people a day, lay in ruins as if having suffered the wrath of some invading army.

It was indeed an invasion that shut the southeast of the country down. Whirling in overnight and camouflaged in, ahem, brilliant white, the snow had come out of nowhere and with more force than anyone had reckoned. It was the worst storm in nearly two decades. Two decades hence, we might just sit down with our children, huddling by the fire and clutching a mug of hot chocolate, and tell them about that February of 2009 when a blizzard did what the German hadn't managed six and a half decades earlier and brought a proud country to its knees. Cue to some patriotic music. Never, never, never give up.

With the radio awash in stupendous stories and the thrill of the exceptional in the air, it might be defensible to get a bit carried away. My writing certainly did during the previous paragraph. Just now, a quick glance through the window served as a reality check and restored my balance.

The street in front of my house is easily passable, and the sidewalk doesn't present an insurmountable obstacle either. A good six inches of snow cover the ground. A few flakes are still dancing in the air, but they don't look determined to join their buddies on the street. It's undeniable that we were visited by a substantial snowstorm during the night, but it's nothing that should in any way lead to extraordinary incidents on the scale observed. In fact, it's nothing that would lead to raised eyebrows in the places I've lived before.

Here, the effects of a bit of weather – and you would think the English could do weather; it is, after all, what they're notorious for – are stunning. Last night, when I was done preparing today's journal club and ready for bed, I noticed the storm that showed such a pervasive effect this morning. I decided to go for a walk through my neighborhood, never mind it was one o'clock.

Uxbridge Road, the main through-fare, resembled a parking lot that some joker had turned into an ice rink. Cars stretched as far as the eye could see. They were haplessly spinning their wheels in vain hope of some traction or control. Once a car got moving, the problems got bigger. How do you stop? Everyone drove slower than pedestrians walked, but collisions were unavoidable. I saw vehicles softly banging into each other but slowly enough to avoid all damage.

The Green itself, blazing white for one night only, was a spooky site. More people were waiting at a bus stop than you would expect in the middle of the night. The 24-hour cafes were doing stiff business, better than I've ever seen. Clearly, a lot of travelers were caught by surprise and got stranded. Curiously, there were hardly any buses. The reason was found between the tube and rail stations.

A number of bendies had got stuck, unable to make the tiny hill leading to Holland Park roundabout. They had slid across the intersection, blocking most traffic with their 18-meter bodies and wedging into each other in what looked like a permanent embrace. With great caution and matching cluelessness, traffic tried to navigate around them. Volunteers, mostly by-standers in need of warming up, delighted in pushing whoever needed extra help. It was a symphony in slow-motion and a harbinger of what was to come the next morning when traffic actually needed to flow.

I'm still sitting in my living room. The buses are still down, and the tube isn't much better. As I worked until one last night, I don't feel a pressing need to make it to lab at the usual time, but I'll have to be there around lunchtime, to present a paper to the group. I might make my way to a coffee shop at the Green and see how the situation develops there.

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