Nearly a quarter of a million people in north-eastern Spain were without power yesterday after the heaviest snowfall in decades brought major disruption to the region. A metre (3 feet) of snow fell in the Pyrenees leaving 6,000 travellers stranded and blocking up to 40 roads on the border between Spain and France. Barcelona recorded its heaviest snowfall since 1962 causing road, rail and flight chaos.
Catalonia's interior minister, Joan Boada, said the power cuts, caused by a fault in a high-tension cable, were affecting the area around Girona, 60 miles north of Barcelona.
Spain's border with France at La Junquera was closed causing 30-mile traffic jams while 170,000 pupils had the day off as schools were shut, local newspapers reported. About 3,000 people were put up in a town hall overnight and many others stranded in their cars as railway lines and roads became impassable, Boada said.
Tens of thousands more were unable to get home after snow fell at lunchtime and many left their offices to photograph the rare scenes of central Barcelona and its beach lying under a blanket of snow.
"I've never seen anything like this here in all my life," said Barcelona resident Raquel Lasmarias, 35. [...]
Wednesday, March 10
Snow on Barcelona's beach. What next?
March 10, 2010, (U.K.) Guardian:
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More interesting than the decline and fall of weather forecasting vis-e-vie the IPCC, or even Spain's membership with Greece in the PIGS is what makes sense for the US to do.
Energy will be a source of jobs and national security for most of this century. Oil and coal and natural gas and nuclear are depleting resources (U235 is limited).
Putting all the politics and bad science aside, it does make sense for the US to pursue other energy and chemical feedstock and fertilizer technologies that will require subsidies to get started.
Not to recommend logic and good budgets and future planning or anything of that ilk . . . .
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