I made my way down the staircase at the end of the bridge. It was late on Thursday, somewhere between 10 and 11 pm. The snow was still falling (though quite lightly). What struck me the most, however, was the silence. For a few brief moments, it seemed like it could have been some kind of post-apocalyptic world, or the Rapture; I was alone, at least as far as I could tell.
The UK has witnessed an unexpected patch of cold weather over the past week or so. I have pretty good cold resistance and thus don’t normally detect weather changes that much, though this was of course painfully obvious. It’s possible that more snow fell in London in the last week than in the past five years – at least for the times I’ve been around.
I enjoyed the snow on the first day, though that’s about as long its welcome lasted. For some reason, I generally associate snow with bitterness and harshness, rather than the alleged fascination that people in the UK might tend to have. The reason cited in the article is that it tends to remind people of youth or Christmas, which is fair – I certainly don’t associate the former with snow, and although there is much media about snowy Christmases, I don’t think I have experienced one. I think more Dead of Winter (a board game about surviving winter with zombies) than Jingle Bells. It was interesting to experience a different kind of weather, nonetheless, but the practical pains of dealing with it came to the forefront very quickly.
For me at least, the most pertinent issue was travel disruptions. My commute is typically a 20 minute walk. though because of the snow and ice I had to be substantially more careful with my footing. I easily took 30-plus minutes to traverse the same route. Thankfully I don’t have to drive or take the train in to work, but it certainly affected my colleagues too (and it did mean the office was quieter, which in turn affected me). Expectedly, quite a few flights were cancelled as well; I wasn’t travelling, but this would have certainly been an annoyance if I was.
This wasn’t a factor the last time round, but snow can also cause problems in supply chains. I don’t think I was affected this time, but there was a similar incident in New York early last year; I was waiting on a package to be delivered. Thankfully it was delivered on the morning of the day I was flying back to London, though I got somewhat anxious about whether it would arrive on time. In general of course this could be a much larger logistics problem.
Low temperatures were another factor, though much less significant for me. To paraphrase Elsa, at least most of the time the cold never bothered me anyway – though there were two instances where I decided it made sense to switch on the heating. Apart from that, I’m not sure I did much to deal with the temperatures on their own. I did dress marginally more warmly than normal (which in say low single digit weather is a light jacket), but that was about it.
It’s also suggested that there are correlations between cold weather and various types of illnesses, such as on this NHS page. Of course, I recognise that the impacts on people who spend more time exposed to the cold (e.g. people who work outdoors, rough sleepers) would be substantially greater.
The recent weather also seems to have had a sobering effect on my thoughts. Some of this might be driven by confounding factors (shorter days, more darkness, fewer social gatherings etc). This isn’t bad per se, though I find myself easily engrossed in thoughts that may be counterproductive at times. I also read an article in the Guardian questioning why the UK was unprepared for the snow; while I’m not sure I agree with the central thesis (I don’t have the data, but this may be viewed as an actuarial decision; spending $2 to prevent a 1/10th risk of losing $10 may not be worth it), but there was a point on extreme weather making societal inequalities starkly obvious which I can follow.
The weather is forecasted to return to more normal levels in the week ahead. If that holds, I’ll appreciate the easier travel and that more people are in the office. I’ll count myself fortunate that it hasn’t impacted my routines and plans that much, at least for now.
