said by poacher 1rtd:A swathe of the US eastern seaboard is being engulfed in a winter storm dumping heavy snow as it sweeps north.
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So why does the UK think they are the only ones to cancel flights
It seems to me that the biggest distinction regarding air travel in the US and the UK is that flights in the US are typically cancelled well in advance, so there's lots of notice. (I think that's usually true on the Continent also.) Delta started announcing Christmas Day flight cancellations on Thursday, mostly flights through Atlanta, which is sort of their regional southeast US hub. The storm came right through Atlanta.
Of course, we are fortunate to have 3,000 miles of land mass to the west of us and almost a thousand to north and south (of DC metro, in particular), so we have a fairly good idea of what kind of weather is coming long before it arrives. We also have Doppler radar, something I've never seen as being present in the UK. This generally lets us know not only that there's precipitation on the way, but whether it's rain, snow, or 'mixed' (what we call sleet and freezing rain, which is particularly dangerous). We knew well in advance that the current storm might miss us (here in Reston) completely or we might get up to five inches, depending on the precise storm path. (We got only a trace here, but 60 miles to the east there are places that got a foot or more.)
Here on the southern edge of the snow belt, we've finally built up a substantial supply of snow moving equipment and supplies of grit and salt. Farther south, not so much -- not that it would matter much since down there the big threat are the deadly ice storms.
. . . United Airlines also cancelled dozens of Sunday flights from Newark, Philadelphia, New York's LaGuardia and JFK, Boston and other airports. AirTran and Southwest Airlines also cancelled flights.
British Airways and Virgin are among operators cancelling flights into many eastern destinations, including New York.
Have you got a sledge Jv
Nope, not here (but we do in Shropshire). Here it's expedition-size back packs, snow shoes, Leki ski poles, goggles and arctic parkas.
, and, it's important to remember that what's 'hazardous' in Virginia is merely 'inconvenient' in up-state New York or Michigan.