Unusually for this time of year, snow and ice warnings have been posted by the Met Office taking us to this Sunday, with the possibility of an extension well into next week. Unsurprisingly, this coincides with low wind conditions throughout most of the country, leaving the National Grid struggling for power and contemplating “enhanced actions” to preserve supplies and avoid blackouts as wind power yet again fails to deliver. And, although there have been no official reports, some private users have noticed that gas pressure is down and, in one outlying village in the Cotswolds, it dropped so low that it triggered safety cut-outs in most of the residents’ central heating boilers.
This is in addition to other incidents which have interrupted gas supplies, also leaving residents in the cold and at risk of electricity blackouts. But if pre-Christmas snow – in England, at least – tends to be rare, at times like this we tend to be reminded of the famous article from March 2000, published in the Independent, that proclaimed “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. Now deleted by the embarrassed newspaper, it remains accessible from the Wayback Machine as a mute reminder that the internet never forgets.