From the front page of this morning's Metro:
Hundreds of thousands of skiers could see their holidays ruined as a record-breaking warm spell leaves slopes across Europe snow-free. The dry weather has meant nine out of 12 French Alps resorts which are particularly popular with British skiers have yet to start their seasons...
Up to 400,000 British people travel to France to ski every year, with 250,000 heading for Austria and 150,000 to Italy. About 75,000 go to Switzerland but it has experienced its driest autumn on record.
This evening's Evening Standard devoted a mere three column inches on page 2 to the sequel:
European ski resorts celebrated today as snow "bucketed" down. Bookings surged as bare slopes were coated in snow. "Last week we were getting calls asking us when it was going to start snowing, now we've got people waiting on the phones to book," said Peter Miller of IgluSki.com...
Up to 400,000 British people ski in France every year. Another 250,000 go to Austria and 150,000 to Italy. About 75,000 go to Switzerland, which has had its driest autumn on record.
Both The Metro and The Evening Standard share articles with the Daily Mail of course (or they are just syndicated or whatever the technical term is), what is striking is that the bloke at head office who had to write the updated article just re-wrote the first one (which said exactly the opposite) but one sentence survived the re-write almost intact.
Bankrupt
2 hours ago
4 comments:
Well that is the "impending" UK drought 2012 solved then surely - all we need is for each of our major national dailies to all on the same day publish editorials (or what passes for them any way) pointing out that because November was some half a degree warmer and somewhat drier than the average for November six months from now the UK will be a sun blackened stump with daily water riots and bingo, three days later after that - having suffered persistent torrential rainfall of monsoon proportions they can all publish editorials about how six months from now 80% of the UK will probably be under six feet of water, thus jepardising the Olympics and something must be done about it ... Those major nationals that aren't sure how this is done could no doubt get advice from the Daily Wail which I understand specialises in running press articles on one day of the week explaining how our addiction to 'something' is killing us all; followed a day or so later with an article warning that 90% of us aren't getting nearly enough of that 'something' and so risk dying ..."
Anon tee hee, good point, apparently it's snowing like topsy in a lot of places, but not where I live, the driest county in England, a lot drier than many parts of the Middle East etc cont. page 94.
More to the point, maybe we haven't got enough reservoir capacity or something?
Mark, I don't think reservoir capacity is the problem, I think the problem is that in the east of England, most water is pumped out of the ground and you need sustained rainfall to resupply ground water as a lot in a short time just runs off.
No problem with drought here in Wales, though. Of course, we get the same water-saving propaganda that everyone else in the UK gets, but it seems particularly pointless here.
B: " I don't think reservoir capacity is the problem,"
Well, neither of us are experts, but we do occasionally have droughts in this country, i.e. in practical terms where they have to cut off the mains water, going back decades. That is precisely because the UK (particularly rainy hilly Wales, less so less rainy flat Essex) is usually blessed with a lot of rain, so nine years out of ten we simply don't need that much reservoir capacity, we manage fine without it.
It's the one year in ten that's a problem, question is, is it worth spending all that money just because of a few weeks, one year in ten? The view of a normal person whose lawn dries out and can't wash his car is different to the view of a farmer who really needs loads of water etc.
See also: "was Boris right to accept that for one day last year, the whole of London just shut down because of snow?"
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