It is hard to believe we are living on the same planet as the one we were on yesterday.
A very rude awakening: local radio telling us not to go out, roads impassable, nothing moving. The usual presenters unable to get into the station, the stalwart stand-ins relying on listeners phoning in to replace the normal news crew’s gathering of information about exactly what was happening, where, out there.
Only – a peek through the bedroom curtains revealed no snow at all.
The story just a couple of hundred feet higher up was of eight inches of snow & high winds. Cars & lorries stranded on ungritted roads. In Buxton a radio transmitter, some mobile masts & all terrestrial tv had been knocked out. Many homes throughout the area were without power. Train services were cancelled or delayed.
Completely unforecast, it just started suddenly around 5.30am. It was coming from the east, so the Pennines provided protection for those of us low down in the west, but those high up, or close to one of the gaps which, in normal times, allow passage over to the other side, were feeling its full force.
One man who got in touch with the station on his mobile had just been released after being stuck for five hours; it took the combined forces of a JCB & a snow plough to release the cars, starting at the back of the queue he was in, digging them out, clearing the snow which persisted in blowing over from the fields, then turning them round to travel back from whence they came. To make matters worse he had, only at the weekend, removed the snow shovel & other emergency equipment from the boot of his car, since spring had so obviously arrived.
Later on they told us that the bus to the airport was running, though not all the way back to Buxton, but all train services were suspended.
Clearly no point going out in such miserable conditions.
Among the events which got badly interfered with – the radio station’s own Eighth Birthday Celebration. As they kept reminding us, they have never before had to report disruptions like this.
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June 2nd 1975
June 2nd 1975
