UPDATE: BBC and Reuters is reporting (h/t to reader FergalR) that:
‘Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he had asked the government’s chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a “step change” in weather patterns due to climate change and whether it needed to spend more money on winter preparations.’
Maybe they’ll have a look at Met Office climate models and CRU with a real investigation.
Record grit reserves in Lincolnshire ‘60% gone’
More than half the grit stocks held by Lincolnshire County Council have already been used, officials have said.
Despite starting the winter with 31,600 tonnes – 8,000 more than usual – the council said it had already used about 60% due to persistent low temperatures.
It had spread almost as much salt this year as it did for the whole of the 2007-08 winter.
The council said the next delivery was not due until mid-January so resources would be used carefully.
Councillor William Webb, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, promised to keep main routes open.
He said: “We’ll keep on gritting whenever it’s needed – be that 1pm on Christmas Day or Midnight on New Year’s Eve – whilst ensuring that appropriate quantities are being spread and salt isn’t wasted.
“We greatly value the assistance of farmers, contractors and even private individuals in supporting our tireless efforts to ensure safety for motorists and pedestrians.”
The authority covers 1,869 miles (3,008km) of Lincolnshire’s main routes, including all A and B roads.
While the amount of snow seen at the beginning of the month is not forecast for the next few days, temperatures as low as -7C (19.4F) are expected to be widespread.
Related – On December 2nd, this BBC story said:
Road salt is ‘disappearing fast’, Welsh councils warn
At the London Evening Standard, it seems at least one official is confident though, or maybe he’s “hiding the decline” of grit:
Today Boris Johnson promised Londoners the capital was prepared for anything that the elements could throw at it. He said: “Even if it snows 24 hours a day, morning, noon and night for two weeks, which has never happened before, we have enough grit for our roads.
…
Forecasters said the second big blast of the winter could last until Christmas and warned London to brace itself for “the main event” tomorrow.
It takes “true grit” to make such predictions in the face of nature.
The “grit” has very little grit in it, it’s mostly rock-salt.
The latest addition to the “grit” is molasses, to make it stick to the road.
A lot of the roads in the uk were not designed at all, they just follow age-old footpaths.
Quite a few were built by the Romans and have been “improved” over the years !
I spent several winters in Norway as well… 🙂
You are right about the poles. We (the locals) do it on the local narrow community road where I live, or else the snowplough driver is unable to see where the road is.
You are wrong about salt use, lots of it is being distributed here. It is a major source of pollution as it kills vegetation along the road. When the spring comes, you can see all the brown hedges/trees that should have been green.
Salt use is however different in different places. It is common to see signs along the road “Salting opphører” (“salt distribution ends”), so you have to adapt to the driving conditions. Also, salt is of no use when you have low temperatures like we have had in December this year (about -11C on average here).
Of course, everyone is using winter tyres November to April over here. No amount of salt/grit will save you if you drive on snow with what we call “summer tyres”.
Ralph says ` but they now tend to use synthetic urea. `
I am not sure how to interpret this remark. I use urea all the time for getting rid of ice. It has some virtues; it tends not to rot concrete and similar materials, and does not harm grass and flowers. However, one needs to use it when temperatures are not much below 0 C. Otherwise it is not very efficient. It may or may not be of much use in the UK.
Well if anyone is going to use grit as a temperature proxy, make sure it’s not used upside down like Michael Mann used the Tiljander sediment series.
More grit = colder!
The Met Office lied, people and cars slide!
Maybe there’s hope.
To Transport Secretary Hammond: On what weather forecasting services do you rely? If only the Met Office, you are doing your job poorly. Today there are numerous weather services in Europe and North America that provide alternative weather information. A wise Secretary would subscribe to multiple services, and take the time to compare and contrast the various forecasts. Further levels of analysis could then be developed. Some forecasters may be rated more reliable than others, or rated stronger in certain situations than in others. Obviously the goal is to have the maximum amount of credible information on which to make important transportation decisions. How do you perform your job?
With hurricane forecasts, there are numerous alternative tracks forecasted by various sources and models, and all are given some weight. Hopefully you, Mr. Secretary, are now using multiple weather services.
From the latest edition of Private Eye No.1278 re the performance of wind power in the UK right now:
“Old Sparky likes his Christmas lights to burn brightly in the cold December nights, as well as his two-bar electric heater.
“Turning, then, to the website of Exelon, the company responsible for balancing electricity supply and demand on the National Grid, we can easily find the various contributions to the nation’s electricity requirements from all the different forms of generation. Coal, gas, nuclear, imports from France, wind – they are all tabulated there, hour by hour.
“And what’s this? On a bitterly cold day, with demand close to maximum, at the time of writing we have just gone a full 24 hours where the UK’s wind turbines have provided barely ONE TWENTIETH of their notional capacity, their output never once rising to as much as even a tenth of their capacity throughout the day and thus contributing nothing but uncertainty to the nation’s supplies.
“That’s the trouble: cold snaps frequently coincide with periods of very little wind. But never mind: we shall be paying handsomelyfor ever more of these highly subsidised white elephants, with an ever greater dependence on supposedly unreliable gas imports when the wind lets us down. (A good job Russian gas supplies have proved so reliable over the decades, eh?)
“Keep warm!
“‘Old Sparky'”
Minister Hammond gave a interview just now:
“And I have asked the government’s chief scientist to give us a report on future weather assumptions – whether we should simply assume for future winters that we are going to experience multiple bouts of extreme weather and if is answer is ‘yes, that should be our assumption’ then we will have to sit down collectively and decide how to rerioritise(sic) our investment in the transport infrastructure to focus it towards winter resilience.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12031224
A possible answer might be: “We haven’t got a clue. We never did. It’s probably the Sun; but we can’t say that now after rubbishing the idea for twenty years. We both know it was a scam all along. Why are you even asking me this?”
‘Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he had asked the government’s chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a “step change” in weather patterns due to climate change and whether it needed to spend more money on winter preparations.’
Does he mean similar to this one.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/surge-in-global-temperatures-since-1977-can-be-attributed-to-a-1976-climate-shift-in-the-pacific-ocean/
Temperatures set to hit record low of -26C as forecasters say this could be the coldest winter on record
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339937/UK-snow-weather-update-Temperatures-set-hit-low-26C.html#ixzz18ZVNcMXX
These two likes are best viewed together.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Grit would be a pretty good proxy for development more so than temperature. More development, more grit needed. I wouldn’t use it so much for a temperature proxy. It might overestimate drop, not because of plummeting temps and snow everywhere, but grit needed in now-developed land tracks where it wasn’t needed before. Let’s not make the same mistake AGW proxies make.
[I would not , as a long-time southerner residing in the US, recommend using grit as a proxy for anything weather-related, as it is impervious to destruction by any known means to man, and, once congealed upon the plate, known to resist all removal methods up to and including sandblasting and TNT…. Given the “peak salt” and”peak sand” crisis now upon us, grit may alleviate that shortage somewhat. 8<) Robt]
Any more warming like this and we will hit “peak salt”, to be followed by “peak sand”.
December: A Time to Remember
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Epic FAIL.
With people like this spending our tax money, what could possibly go wrong?
It’s like watching a train crash in slow motion, the outcome is obvious and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. Give it a few more years and it will be time to assemble the scaffolds outside Whitehall.
Carsten Arnholm writes “Also, salt is of no use when you have low temperatures like we have had in December this year (about -11C on average here). ”
I think we need to be careful what “salt” is. If you mean sodium chloride, I suspect you are right with respect to temperatures. But calcium chloride is a different issue. That operates at lower temperatures. I think it is also more corrosive.
The use of the plural there may indicate that you need to see a doctor.
Here on the left coast of Canada (AKA The best place on earth) the highways contractors use what looks like minus 10 mm crush laced with a bit of salt which in turn is (or was) treated with ferrocyanide to prevent clumping. Every Spring you get a new windshield (AKA windscreen).
>>Paul
>>From the latest edition of Private Eye No.1278 re the performance of
>>wind power in the UK right now:
Well that is progress. Private Eye used to be a fully paid up member of the Church of Global Warming, and anything the high priests said from the pulpit, they printed.
All we have to do now, is take over the offices of the Grauniad.
.
Here’s a video interview with the Minister where he repeats the scientific advice bit at 2:30:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12032681
Kate says: December 19, 2010 at 2:12 am
“His steely eyes and jutting jaw speak of his determination. His medal-festooned uniform underlines his power. Rear Admiral David Titley is a sea warrior, but also a scientist with a passion. He is the U.S. Navy’s chief oceanographer and director of its climate change task force. Yes, the U.S. Navy has a climate change task force. With 450 staff.”
Hmmmmm
I wonder if “Titley” is a diminutive form of “Tit”?
Seems to fit……
Ralph says:
December 19, 2010 at 5:28 am
>>Joe
>>When the salt runs out, urine has some salt in it.
That is what is used at all airports, because sodium salt corrodes aircraft (it is the urea that deices). They used to use refined cow piss, but they now tend to use synthetic urea.
Mind where you step….
I’m thinking of writing a crime novel called “Yellow Stains in the Snow.”
Hey Mike Lockwood just said (on Channel 4 News) we are in for 100 years of cold winters, even mentioned Maunder min. But he is wrong, cold and warm winters are frequent sequence. On this graph blue dots are winters.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
I have a scanned pdf copy of a paper published in Nature, Vol 223, Sept 20, 1969. (I am pretty sure I got it from behind a pay-wall) The New Look of Climatology (H.H. Lamb)
Lamb was the founder of CRU, and the progenitor, if you will, of Wigley and Phil Jones.
One of the reasons Lamb founded the CRU, was concern about cooling of the climate, and the effects on weather and crop production. This concern permeates this paper.
Lamb talks of climatology in general. About the warmth of the first 1/2 of the 20th century, and of the cold period in the 1700s, solar influences, shorter growing seasons, and much more.
This is a quote:
…concern in Iceland over the regrowth of the Arctic pack-ice in the 1960s and the anxiety in New York, as well as Rhodesia and the Transvaal, about the the droughts of this decade and in East Africa over the rising lakes.
In England there have been debates about how much money should be spent by high-way authorities on snow clearing equipment and road salt, whilst the Scottish skiing centres have been developed in a run of years far more favourable to the enterprise than for long before.
This quote is telling too.
The more obvious pitfalls of planning for the future either on the assumption of climate remaining constant (that is, subject to only year by year fluctuations) or on blind extrapolation of some recent trend….
My emphasis.
Oh, and he says that more study is needed.
Nigel Brereton says: December 19, 2010 at 1:35 am
Channel 4 news last night reported that emergency services were asking owners of 4*4 vehicles for assistance in ferrying staff, nurses and doctors, to their places of work —–
I have no problem at all in helping out at a comunity level and will gladly assist when needed. I only ask that government policy be re-evaluated —to meet their needs in this cooling climate and the taxation classes adjusted back to the pre green hysteria levels.
Simple request, no pressure!
———————————————————————————
Nigel Brereton. I love the irony but I hope that you are not holding your breath.
Douglas