National: Severe Cold/ Snow Discussion (Thanks to all!)

Shamo

BEASTERLY wrote: »

Is it heavy?

It's falling thick and fast at the moment

whelan1

opticalens wrote: »

Just in from some late night shopping so missed the rte weather, am not sure of the temp, but it was not tooo bad walking home (for the record I am very well wrapped up).....came in to a boiling house though.....roasted now!!

i am near dunleer , i too am just back from rip off tesco.. its -3 out now

banSHE

MINUS 13 in GALWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oliverdog

Minus 10 here in Mid Kerry, mains water finally stopped an hour ago. It was minus 12 in our garden last night.

joes girls

Shamo wrote: »

It's falling thick and fast at the moment

Eh ...... I see nothing made me get out of my lovely warm bed, now i may go look out the door:o

jo06555

BEASTERLY wrote: »

Im talking about their tv forecast after the nine news. They said the showers may reach east muster during the day. The graphics showed it being fairly heavy aswell.(in the south east anyways) I hope their right!

First i heard of more snow was on rte 9 weather and it did say east munster but on graphs only showed snow for east coast really so where are the charts saying south east will get some??? another false dawn for waterford im thinking

Shamo

joes girls wrote: »

Eh ...... I see nothing made me get out of my lovely warm bed, now i may go look out the door:o

Funnily enough, I checked outside again and the cloud has passed. Next time i'll take a video to prove it!

Kev_tag

ME reposted their weather warning!

smokin ace

jo06555 wrote: »

First i heard of more snow was on rte 9 weather and it did say east munster but on graphs only showed snow for east coast really so where are the charts saying south east will get some??? another false dawn for waterford im thinking

looking at the radar its passing us by along the coast the wind will have to change

rsom

Snowing in Rathfarnham!

ffarrell7

Yeah. A number of years ago I lived in French Canda, in Québec. I even spent my honeymoon there - in montréal all the way up to la ville de Québec. This French speaking province alone (the richest in Canada) is the combined size of France, Germany, Italy and Britain - enormous. Canada is huge ( a tiny bit smaller than the US)but has a tiny population - only about 32 million (10 million French speakers). They all seem to have special shelters for their cars and plug them in to stop the diesel/petrol from freezing. I got freezing rain on my car once and it took me about 15 minutes to get it off the windscreen . it was so thick. I didn't have the proper de-icer because I had just arrived. I have also lived in the French Alps and that is much less cold than the weather we are having right now--the only reason they have much snow is owing to their altitude really -nothing more. But Canada is bloody savage and Winnipeg is not only a dump but the coldest place I have ever experienced...much colder than anywhere else in Caanda but boring as hell. There is no comparison between a Canadian winter and a European winter even a Eastern European one is very mild in comparison...none whatsover. Savage is an understatement.:):):)

Jimjay

Thick and fast in greystones, just slowing now. Got a fresh White covering on the cars.

4Sheets

jo06555 wrote: »

First i heard of more snow was on rte 9 weather and it did say east munster but on graphs only showed snow for east coast really so where are the charts saying south east will get some??? another false dawn for waterford im thinking

look up..precip charts link on met.ie

foxinsox

CARLOW

Oakpark -8c
Tullow -7.9

not even a bit of dandruff here..
but cold..

ch750536

22:10 N15 Kilygordon No Recent Rainfall -11.2°C -14.3°C 0 Km/h
Southerly

http://www.nratraffic.ie/weather/default.asp?view=air&RegionId=0

sweet-rasmus

Snowing heavy again with big flakes in Dun Laoghaire.

jo06555

smokin ace wrote: »

looking at the radar its passing us by along the coast the wind will have to change

Thats what im thinking too.

4Sheets wrote: »

look up..precip charts link on met.ie

Ye i see that but cant make sense of how its headin in south east looks at best to be clipping coast i may be wrong as i dont know..

mothel

Snowing in D24. think it'll just be short shower though!

jo06555

ch750536 wrote: »

I cant see the warming that was forecast previously, it is really cold here, a southerly for a day isn't going to solve this. Was looking at the road temps earlier, no difference between surface, 30cm & 50cm, speaks volumes (well a small %age difference).
I think the high will hold and the ice is here for another week at least.

Meaning more snow too

joes girls

Shamo wrote: »

Funnily enough, I checked outside again and the cloud has passed. Next time i'll take a video to prove it!

It's ok, i believe you, saw some fresh snow on the path when you made me go down look out the door:p

delw

another little shower brewin on the radar,might intensify as gets closer

psycho-hope

just had a fairly heavy snow shower here lasted bout 20 mins

jo06555

Where are or were met getting their forecast for snow east munster tonight and tommorrow??

LostChild

Canada is bigger than the US, it's the second largest country in the world behind Russia. Regarding the weather there, my girlfriend is Canadian and she says that they get much worse than this but have the infrastructure to deal with it properly. There's a whole underground "winter city" in Quebec because it is too cold to go outside! The one thing she does think we make a mess of over here is the lack of ploughing that happens on the roads when we get snow.

ffarrell7 wrote: »

Yeah. A number of years ago I lived in French Canda, in Québec. I even spent my honeymoon there - in montréal all the way up to la ville de Québec. This French speaking province alone (the richest in Canada) is the combined size of France, Germany, Italy and Britain - enormous. Canada is huge ( a tiny bit smaller than the US)but has a tiny population - only about 32 million (10 million French speakers). They all seem to have special shelters for their cars and plug them in to stop the diesel/petrol from freezing. I got freezing rain on my car once and it took me about 15 minutes to get it off the windscreen . it was so thick. I didn't have the proper de-icer because I had just arrived. I have also lived in the French Alps and that is much less cold than the weather we are having right now--the only reason they have much snow is owing to their altitude really -nothing more. But Canada is bloody savage and Winnipeg is not only a dump but the coldest place I have ever experienced...much colder than anywhere else in Caanda but boring as hell. There is no comparison between a Canadian winter and a European winter even a Eastern European one is very mild in comparison...none whatsover. Savage is an understatement.:):):)

fr wishy washy

Just started snowing in Blessington

4Sheets

Met have the warning back up!!

http://www.met.ie/forecasts/warnings.asp

M.T. Cranium

Agree in general with the comments on how Canada copes (or not) with the snow and winter cold. We call Winnipeg "Winterpeg" and the standing joke is, the climate is ten months of winter and two months of mosquitoes.

Actually it's more like six months of winter, a week of spring, three months of summer (and mosquitoes) and a month of autumn. Not my favourite destination either.

But a comparison can be drawn between Dublin and Vancouver. They are both rather hilly cities with narrow residential streets (off the main road grid in Vancouver, that is). I live in "greater" Vancouver but it's the same throughout the region. We don't get as much snow as the rest of Canada and not every winter gets a significant snowfall. Two winters ago, we had our "snowmaggedon" and basically the region barely coped with it. We have perhaps 10-20 per cent the number of snowplows of other large cities in Canada and the northern U.S., possibly more than Dublin, but not enough to do anything about the side streets for weeks on end. The main roads were good enough, but the side streets became impassable (this would have lasted from about 12 Dec to 12 Jan in 2008-09). From about Christmas Eve to New Years we had a level two feet which turned into huge muffler-destroying ramps of frozen slush down the centre line of side streets that were otherwise clogged with parked cars mostly unmovable, and the sidewalks were obstacle courses, some cleared by residents and property managers, others left to a natural death that turned out to be mixed snow, slush and ice. It meant that older folks and the handicapped were virtually trapped at home unless lucky enough to live within steps of transit, then you could at least shop at the all-enclosed malls near the skytrain route. I'm fit enough and was able to get around, but it was tough sledding.

Another big problem was garbage collection, here the garbage trucks routinely come down the back lanes between streets and collect from bins placed out there. Of course, these back lanes were totally impassable in most cases, and only half the residents were even trying to put out their garbage anyway. And apartment buildings that are serviced from the street and underground parking ramps were finding they had unpredictable service, there being many streets that garbage trucks could not handle, plus if they did get close to a building they would have to block the road for ten minutes as the ramp entrances were generally too narrow with the piled up snow. Delivery service also took a big hit from the impassable streets. Medical emergencies were probably much more difficult to handle, and one or two fires burned out of control because of difficulties for fire crews reaching either the building or the water sources.

Now, cities more used to snowfall still have similar problems because many Canadians park on the street in our cities, and just because there are regulations about towing cars in a storm does not mean this can go ahead really fast after each storm, usually what happens instead is that the cities wait 3-5 days and hope that the snow will be more manageable on the side streets and that the residents will have dug their cars out and then the notices go up, so people go somewhere for the day and leave the streets clear for the crews. But this often turns the side streets into obstacle courses and icy or slushy disaster zones too. The climate in Toronto and to a lesser extent Montreal is not that cold, it can warm up to near freezing or above after a snowstorm. The blizzard of '99 (on Jan 2-3, 1999) was so bad in Toronto that the army was called in to help clear the snow. It wasn't the depth alone that caused that, but the sheer chaos of the side streets. The city crews could handle the main roads but the city was basically paralyzed because most people couldn't move out of their homes to reach even the nearby transit and shops.

Out in the rural areas and smaller cities and towns, snow clearing is fairly routine stuff in most cases, but sometimes the snow belts in the Great Lakes get a bigger snowfall than the crews can handle, and it is not unknown for some highways and many side roads in that part of the country to be closed for days or even weeks at a time in severe winters. People in those areas generally have snowmobiles and can organize their survival needs, but of course it's routine in outlying parts of rural Canada to have a month's worth of survival food and meds on hand at all times in the winter.

The worst I ever saw, and this was living in the Lake Huron snowbelt, was a level four feet of snow that then drifted to over ten feet in places in 40-50 mph north winds. This was quite late in the winter season around April 3-7 of 1975, and the sun was then warm enough to thaw the surface of the snowdrifts by day, and then they would freeze solid at night. The snowplows could not get through this for days, and travellers were stranded in shelters and school gyms for up to a week. I can also remember storms in January 1971 that closed down large parts of central Ontario for weeks, but I wasn't in those areas at the time. Some lucky people were stranded over a weekend at the ski resorts near Georgian Bay and got to spend a free week there.

I don't think there's really any "lessons" to be learned, it's more like the economics of scale, if you rarely get heavy snow, whether you're in Ireland or Canada's west coast, you tend to under-supply the maintenance side and hope for the best. This works well eight or nine winters out of ten.

The one thing that did make me laugh a bit was the U.K. government guy on the news saying that we have predictable winters and the U.K. does not, therefore nobody should be surprised that six inches of snow closed down Heathrow for four days. Excuse me? Even if they had no clue that was coming, they could surely react to it with snow clearance within four days. But why would anyone be surprised by this snowfall after a month of brutally cold weather? I didn't understand that excuse, and I suspect most of the public didn't either.

devilabit

ffarrell7 wrote: »

Yeah. A number of years ago I lived in French Canda, in Québec. I even spent my honeymoon there - in montréal all the way up to la ville de Québec. This French speaking province alone (the richest in Canada) is the combined size of France, Germany, Italy and Britain - enormous. Canada is huge ( a tiny bit smaller than the US)but has a tiny population - only about 32 million (10 million French speakers). They all seem to have special shelters for their cars and plug them in to stop the diesel/petrol from freezing. I got freezing rain on my car once and it took me about 15 minutes to get it off the windscreen . it was so thick. I didn't have the proper de-icer because I had just arrived. I have also lived in the French Alps and that is much less cold than the weather we are having right now--the only reason they have much snow is owing to their altitude really -nothing more. But Canada is bloody savage and Winnipeg is not only a dump but the coldest place I have ever experienced...much colder than anywhere else in Caanda but boring as hell. There is no comparison between a Canadian winter and a European winter even a Eastern European one is very mild in comparison...none whatsover. Savage is an understatement.:):):)

Yeah i lived in Montreal for a few years and it always had plently of snow, actually its the snowiest city with over 1 million people in the world and colder than Moscow in winter even though its almost at the the same latitude as Nice in France. However Montreal's record (383cm) is about the average in Quebec city, you might have a snow depth of 50 or more cm in Montreal but you get to Quebec city and its a total different story. Average max in Montreal in winter is -5C in Jan and min is -12C so about the same as the coldest we have here now. There were days walking into work when it was -30C with a wind chill close to -50C. Anyways what im trying to say is that I agree!

ffarrell7

LostChild wrote: »

Canada is bigger than the US, it's the second largest country in the world behind Russia. Regarding the weather there, my girlfriend is Canadian and she says that they get much worse than this but have the infrastructure to deal with it properly. There's a whole underground "winter city" in Quebec because it is too cold to go outside! The one thing she does think we make a mess of over here is the lack of ploughing that happens on the roads when we get snow.

Yeah, I was in the underground malls in Rue St. Catherine etc. U are right by the way. Canada is slightly larger in area than the US and not the other way around.

ffarrell7

devilabit wrote: »

Yeah i lived in Montreal for a few years and it always had plently of snow, actually its the snowiest city with over 1 million people in the world and colder than Moscow in winter even though its almost at the the same latitude as Nice in France. However Montreal's record (383cm) is about the average in Quebec city, you might have a snow depth of 50 or more cm in Montreal but you get to Quebec city and its a total different story. Average max in Montreal in winter is -5C in Jan and min is -12C so about the same as the coldest we have here now. There were days walking into work when it was -30C with a wind chill close to -50C. Anyways what im trying to say is that I agree!

Yeah Québec Ville is torture in winter..even a lot colder than Montréal and that is bad. Makes New York seems like Nice in South of France temperature wise. No comparison.