I had to go somewhere on Christmas Eve – a long drive south in snow and fog. I knew it was going to be a potentially risky journey, so I took special care.<\/p>\n
You see, the night before – bearing in mind the many,\u00a0many roads\u00a0our illustrious Nottingham City and County Councils had seen fit not to grit – we had a strange combination of weather. The roads were already slick with compacted snow, and what first happened was that is rained heavily on top of this <\/strong>.<\/p>\n I’m not sure if those who work for the councils are aware of what happens when you pour water on top of ice when the outside temperature is at or below freezing, but if they do they certainly don’t seem to care.<\/p>\n After about half an hour of rain, the precipitation turned progressively through sleet and then to heavy snow. I should say that about another 1cm or more fell by the time it stopped.<\/p>\n Now, just imagine the surface that resulted from the following:<\/p>\n I didn’t have to drive on this, fortunately (though there were some rural roads in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire closed for similar reasons). But listening to the radio as I started my journey on Christmas Eve, it appears that conditions Wednesday night and Thursday morning were some of the worst in memory. Police had had to close roads on just about any hill (according to the radio) because it was impossible to get up them. But unlike Gloucs and Wilts, where it was a few isolated rural roads they had closed, at least some of these in Nottingham were in the centre of the the City (Mapperley and Carlton).<\/p>\n Last night (Christmas Day evening) the temperature stayed above freezing and a lot of the snow finally began to melt properly – although the compacted and untreated surfaces are even more treacherous in this state. The roads have been iced over for a whole week, yet the Nottingham City and County Councils have done almost nothing.<\/p>\n The last week has cost me at least \u00a3400 in lost income.<\/p>\n Still, at least the councils saved some rock salt, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had to go somewhere on Christmas Eve – a long drive south in snow and fog. I knew it was going to be a potentially risky journey, so I took special care. You see, the night before – bearing in mind the many,\u00a0many roads\u00a0our illustrious Nottingham City and County Councils had seen fit not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latestposts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n