Traffic stuck in the snow on the motorway
On the 6th January I had to catch a flight to Peru to visit family, but when it suddenly snowed I nearly didn’t make it!
We had been planning to leave late in the evening because the flight to Peru was very early next morning. What we didn’t realise was that the heaviest snow in the last 50 years was about to block all the roads in the south of the country.
As soon as the snow started we heard reports on the radio about roads being blocked with accidents and traffic jams forming for miles behind. We had two possible routes to get to Heathrow Airport (one of the three large airports around London) one was slightly faster but took us through roads with just one lane each side through fields and hills along the A3(M). The other route was via the M27 motorway – which is wider and has more emergency access but was a longer route.
Normally, these routes take about 1 and a half hours so with over 11 hours until my flight was due to leave we thought we would be fine… but my husband had heard the news on the radio that snow was blocking roads in our area and his father had called him to say it was going to snow all over the south of the country so leave soon.
When my husband came back from work and got my bags and put them in the car he was looking worried. It had only taken 10 minutes, but in that time there was already 6-7 cm of new snow all over his car. ‘It’s fluffy snow’ he said looking at the sky. The snow was sticking together into big lumps as it fell and was quickly getting deep. He decided we had better go immediately and take the motorway because if there was an accident it might be possible to get past it and the emergency services would help.
Snow at the Motorway services
Normally, if you get on the motorway to Southampton it takes just half an hour – its about 37km. It took us about 4 hours!
To start with many trucks that were coming from the ferries in Portsmouth couldn’t travel along the motorway. It is only a very small incline but the trucks could not get up it – they just kept slipping on the snow. There wheels just crushed the snow and it because as slippery as ice and their wheels just span around. The worst thing is that these trucks started to slide across the road and people had to start driving around them.
Some people were just sitting in their cars, too scared to drive any more and they just blocked up the road. The rest of us were queuing behind for miles, trying to get forward a metre or two at a time. We had to drive in the tracks of the cars in front of us, and if we didn’t keep in their tracks we just slid around.
As we listened to the car radio we heard that people all over the south of England were stuck in traffic and abandoning their cars. We could also see empty cars at the sides of the road and people walking towards the motorway exits with their briefcases while others were wrapping up to sleep in their cars. But this made things worse, because these cars started to block the emergency services from getting to accidents.
On the other route that we could have taken the road was closed and many hundreds of people had to sleep in their cars that night.
Our street covered in snow
All this time we saw hardly any traffic coming in the other direction – what was happening to them? Then we saw the first snow plough, scraping the snow off the roads and cars following behind and trucks spreading salt onto the roads to help melt the snow.
Once we got about half way to the airport things started to get easier – most traffic had either got home or people had walked. No new traffic was coming onto the motorways so it was getting quieter. We stopped at the motorway services to have a quick rest and nearly got stuck in the snow when we left, it was deep wnough that the car tyres couldn’t touch the road. We could only get out by driving very slowly. In many northern countries they have special winter tyres and snow chains – but in England where it has not snowed like this for so long no one has this.
We got back onto the road and followed in the tracks of big trucks that could squeeze the snow out of their way. We couldn’t tell what lane we were in – there are three lanes on the motorway but we just followed behind the two black lines of the trucks. If we tried to over take them we were driving on wet snow and we slid around dangerously. But at least we were getting there!
Eventually we arrived at the airport at 1.30am! We parked the car and sat in the airport waiting for the coffee shop to open. At about 5am I could see that my airline was about to open their desks and my husband left to start his journey home. He was possibly going to sleep in car too or find a hotel if the roads were not improving.
When my husband finally got home at 7am there were no cars on the roads where we live, he was driving around on new snow and his car was spinning around and on every corner he had to slow down to a crawl.
That night parts of the country were -17 C and thousands of homes had no electricity.
I was already above the clouds and snow, flying over the seas back to a sunny Peru.
Links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6947586/Snow-covers-Britain-from-head-to-toe.html
