out in the wild

Last night I woke up several times, my otherwise peaceful sleep interrupted by the steady ping-pong of water dripping off the rain gutter of my roof. This morning, when I opened my eyes wide enough to see, I realized that it wasn't a cautious rain that had fallen but the temperature that had risen. All the snow on the roofs had melted and most of it in the streets. The sidewalks had turned from glassy ice rinks to be navigated with studded boot only to slushy messes best avoided.

I couldn't avoid them; I had to walk to work. But over the course of the day, the temperature stayed above freezing and the thawing continued. It was even accelerated by one of those instantly recognizable London drizzles, more a slowly condensing mist than true precipitation. When I walked home at night, the sidewalks were clear.

Listening to the news, I get the feeling that I live in a bubble, in a paradise of clemency that has no relation to the meteorological misery that's suffocating the world around me. The Met Office, Britain's national weather service, is still warning of severe weather conditions and cautions that arctic air will stay with use until Boxing Day. (I don't know when that it, but assume it's the day the after-Christmas sales begin and the British don their padded gloves to fight for their right to consume austerity away.) Heathrow Airport declared, proudly and with the intense urgency of a Herculean task that will be accomplished come what may, that work was now underway to clear the southern runway of snow and ice.

More likely than my own protective bubble is an outside world of ineptness and preemptive capitulation. Heathrow, for example, was shut down by snow on Friday and remained closed over the weekend, corralling eager travelers into makeshift camps on the terminal floors and into tents outside. They are now beginning to clear the second runway, three days after the last snow, while thousands are still waiting to commence their trips into the sun or the arms of their families.

It is curious that the UK is home to the only airports in Europe that cannot seem to handle snow quickly and professionally. It is obvious that right now disruptions cause the greatest damage and are most visible. Christmas traffic forces airports and airlines to operate at capacity. But this is no excuse. There are some systemic problems that need to be addressed. In their quest to maximize profits, airport operators have done what business school curricula tell them to: cut costs and increase efficiencies. However, when an operation is run at close to maximal efficiency, there is no slack in the system when something goes wrong. One little glitch causes three related procedures to slow down or come to a halt, and the catastrophe takes off from there. In no time, a chain reaction of unforeseen effects causes the whole system to freeze up. Now it takes ages to unravel and restart operations because everything is interlinked, dependent on everything else to move properly. Meanwhile, countless victims have spent the third night out at a nonfunctional airport, turning into something not unlike refugee camp in the high mountains of Afghanistan.

It seems to me that there is no way to force airport to have enough equipment and powerful enough procedures to deal with chaos. How much is enough? How would a government decide? But the government could demand a tax from the airport for every hour it is closed out of schedule. This would make it financially sensible to take the necessary precautions to keep the airports open.

It is now nearly midnight. There's nothing left to thaw in my neighborhood, and the southern runway is operational again (though closed for the night). It is officially one degree Celsius, just above freezing, and not expected to get much colder for the next few days. Light snow is forecast, but the big freeze has for now been vanquished. On Thursday, I'm flying to Germany – from Heathrow. In this knowledge, I'll sleep peacefully tonight.