ot : news bias

...and Derek spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

BBC News this morning - severe weather warning, panel pops up with "HEAVY SNOW" in red behind Carol Kirkwood. Quote:

"Heavy snow is forecast for Northern Ireland today, with falls of one to two centimetres in places."

Gosh, that's almost an inch, as a woman once said to me.

Well there is a little bit of truth to it, but not for the reason the media imply. If you are from Michigan you probably used snow tyres [tires] in the winter and all-season tyres in the summer. Here all you can buy is tyres that are a menace at temperatures even fractionally below zero. They may as well be made of leather. THAT is what causes the road chaos.

BTW, before setting off for the Krkono?e Mountains on the Czech border with Poland last February I tried to buy some snow tyres here. They asked "How gnarly do you want them?" That told me all I needed to know! (Snow tyres are quite smooth, with narrow, self-cleaning grooves. But mainly they are formulated to maintain their elasticity at extremely low temperatures.)

Roy

On or around Thu, 29 Dec 2005 12:35:04 -0000, "Roy Hann" enlightened us thusly:

got winter tyres for the back of the minibus, but had to order 'em specially. As you say, different compound.

actually, my experience of winter/snow tyres is that the tread is much like most of the AT pattern tyres, with lots of smallish blocks, but the main point is they should be narrow, not wide low-profile ones.

Ah herself is a Michiganer oi be from Cheshire moi deer . I agree different horses for different courses tho' narrow tyres for snow to get the penetration, block pattern are better in that respect which is just as well as thats most pukka 4x4 tyres but hard packed snow is a different prospect.The experienced ( that would be folk driving crew buses around Hope Valley Derbyshire) are known to use studded tyres which is about the only way you get out of Castleton when the snow gets packed too hard for the tread to cut into to the snow.Studded which are of course hopeless on tarmac (and illegal in the UK if they are causing damage to the tarmac) but fun to watch in the Andros Trophy

-5 C last night still no snow

I was once at the austrian border with slovenia, the border was closed as there was no snow-clearing equipment on the slovenian side, we were at the border post for 2 hours, when we went back to the vehicles (land rovers) there was a metre of snow on them. in my book, THAT is heavy snow that warrents large red lettering on TV.

having said that, i went to plymouth last night, about half an hours drive away along the A38, one of the counties 2 major routes, it was

-5c and -8c in places, and damp so there was alot of ice about. not once did i see a gritter and the roads didn't look nor feel gritted. WTF are they playing at?

-- Mark.

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Plus American cars tend(ed?) to have large long stoke engines and hence good torque and engine braking charateristics.

Richard

They've heard you complaining about having to weld rotten chassis ;-)

Martin

What do you drive? I could have understood if you were asking for the other stationary traffic to be 'moved' but do you really need the roads to be gritted?

We only pay for gritters, they last longer if not used!

It's all relative to what weather is normal - for example I am expecting 41C today, normal summer temperature, but can you imagine if this happened in London ......

And, of course, for the UK media London is the world, same as for most Americans the US is the world. JD

Twas driving the Jaguar, it's a bit of a handful in the slippy.

-- Mark.

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