Season's Greetings! Early Northern-Hemisphere temperate winter to you all! I was expecting it to be January before there was any snow settling, so this has been a bit of a surprise.
Heavy snow that settles to any sort of depth is a rarity in most parts of England and Wales, so the contingency plans for it are generally insufficient to keep all but a few main roads operating (because to do so would require spending money on buying, maintaining and storing lots of road-clearing equipment and supplies that would rarely be used). Unfortunately that means that when it does happen lots of people - not, in general, the default privileged ones - end up trapped in their homes.
