Castlebar - County Mayo - Snow Reasons to be Cheerful

To read the papers, listen to the radio news or watch the TV you would think that a national disaster had befallen the country. A few days – well okay a few weeks - of cold weather and icy disaster results. WRONG! The recent cold weather that we just have experienced - since just before Christmas until about the 15 or 16 of January 2010 when the thaw finally arrived - is proving to be a major economic benefit to the country.

In fact the recent cold spell is a fiendishly clever stimulus package dreamed up by the boys and gals at Met Eireann.There are quite a few reasons to be cheerful:

1. Very few people killed on the roads compared with the normal total for the Christmas and New Year period. While four deaths is four too many it would appear that there are quite a few people walking around today in early 2010 that in a ‘normal’ year would have been killed on the roads by now. So, while there were lots of minor collisions and cars hitting walls, ditches, footpaths, etc., there were few fatalities.
2. Neighbourliness increased as people helped their neighbours out. Neighbours helped with shopping for the elderly who sensible stayed indoors in order to avoid slips and falls and potential broken bones. Neighbours provided water to those whose mains pipes had frozen. Neighbours assisted those who had more serious leaks inside their homes from frozen pipes.

3. Fertiliser sales soared. A bonanza for those co-ops that were quick enough to realise that urea is a good anti-freeze agent and could supplement the dwindling salt supplies. Normally nitrogen sales would not start until well into spring and here they had an economic bonanza in January! Would have thought of manuring the roads?
4. Sales of chemicals to water treatment plants soared. Of course when the thaw came and the urea hit the water supplies as toxic ammonia the water was unfit for human consumption and took quite a bit of additional treatment to get rid of it from the many water treatment works across the country!
5. The Overtime Bonanza. If the Government had come up with an economic stimulus package that got so many extra workers out from St. Stephen’s Day until two weeks and counting after New Year’s Day it would be hailed as a work of genius.

We have had workers working through the night to spread salt, grit (and not forgetting the urea) on our roads.
We have had workers out fixing broken pipes and trying to thaw frozen water and get the stuff flowing again.
We have had workers out filling the mile-deep potholes that have suddenly appeared - freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw ice bursting up through the road pavement giving glimpses of the core of the Earth in some places.
And not forgetting the Met Office workers who had to put in the hours – their cheery faces telling us how many records were being broken since 1947

6. Tarmageddon: A boom in sales of pitch and chips for filling in the potholes.
7. Oil Boom: Sales of heating oil and fuel generally have gone through the roof bringing a welcome stimulus to fuel suppliers who with all this talk about global warming really thought they were going out of business if they had another mild winter. Extra staff hired to keep up with demand – money to be spent in the shops later in the year.
8. Insulation Bonanza: It takes a cold spell like this to make people realise that their homes are not well insulated. With the grants available for insulating your walls and attic there will be jobs for many of the recently out of work builders who built the badly insulated houses in the first place.
9. Extra Holidays for Kids and Parents – schools closed and many workers unable to get to work meant that families had even more quality time together than normal over Christmas.
10. A 50% Reduction in Burglaries compared to normal for this time of year! What could be wrong with that?
11. Kodak Moment Boom Time for photographic shops or online services printing out all those wonderful snowy photographs emailed in by all us happy snow snappers.
12. Body Shoppers: A bonanza for good panel beaters and body shop artists in repairing all those minor bumps and dents in the cars of the nation. All that extra money being circulated around the economy that would otherwise have been salted away (using that word salted advisedly of course), merely adding to the recession.
13. Chirpy Stimulus: Sales of bird feed went through the roof as people who would never normally give a bird the time of day went to trouble to make sure that their feathered friends were fed and watered.

All in all – as a neat stimulus package as you could dream up while watching the New Year being ushered in with a genuine twice in a month full Blue Moon?

Now who said it was Always Winter but Never Christmas?