Primal Sneeze

On New Year’s Eve 2009 I made the 25 minute trip to a friends’ house to wipe their kids’ noses, change nappies, read bedtime stories and other fun New Year’s activities, while they went out to do something involving alcohol, singing and hugging strangers.

It was freezing as I left home. The roads had not been treated from what I could see. Not surprising as many counties have run out of funds and/or materials to carry out these works. But the roads weren’t overly bad and I arrived in plenty of time.

Kids wiped, changed and regaled with tales of a giraffe who can’t dance and a fox in socks I settled in on Twitter to watch the rest of the world get involved with alcohol, singing and hugging strangers.

Interspersed with count downs to midnight and reading Tweets about the weather I watched Google’s New Year Easter egg unfold, monitored the (lack of) breaking news and generally arsed about on the Web.

At midnight, as I slipped outside to see the fireworks, the snow began to fall. Light fluffy flakes that sparkled in the flickering Christmas lights hung above the doorway. All going well a crisp white blanket would soon be draped across the landscape. Magical, I thought, until I realised I had to drive home in it and no salting/gritting had been done.

1:15 came and the revellers returned. I brushed the snow off the car taking care to clear the roof in case that crisp white blanket came sliding down on the windscreen as I drove. And I made sure the lights were unobstructed. All the stuff you’re supposed to do.

I set out promising to return immediately if I thought the roads too dangerous. My own two eyes, previous experience and what I’d gleaned off Twitter meant I had a pretty good idea what I was facing – rough but doable.

Getting out of the estate and down the lane to the main road was easy as it hadn’t been driven on, though I could feel the car shimmy when it encountered ice where the snow was less deep.

The main road was somewhat different. The snow had been packed hard by traffic. A car in front of me and a truck behind, all three keeping our distance. Top gear, a light foot on the throttle and we all tipped along at 60km/h or so without much worry.

Approaching Naas things changed. First off was the small roundabout on the ring road. A damn nuisance in these conditions. No matter what you do, sudden sharp steering is unavoidable. Not good in snow.

Next up were the boyracers in their butt-mobiles practising their handbrake turns. They clearly had no comprehension that on hard-packed snow, with virtually no traction, that can quickly go wrong. And it did. One car spun, mounted the path and smacked off a litter bin. What if that was another car, or worse, a pedestrian?

My own fear was one would come to rest sideways on the road and I wouldn’t have enough distance in which to stop. That didn’t happen.

Though it nearly did. At the first red light, the car in front braked hard and slid down the slope. It came to a sudden stop as it hit the one and only clear spot in the whole town. I tapped and tapped on the brakes but couldn’t seem to slow and the cold sweats began. I considered flashing in the hope the other driver would realise what was happening and break the red. With nothing oncoming I thought of crossing onto the other side of the road. That’s what I’d do if it came to it, so I indicated as a warning. The car behind had already begun to edge over. Two Gardaí in the same predicament I noticed.

The lights turned green and, while relieved, I hoped I was going slowly enough to take the chicane at Murtagh’s Corner without slamming into the three expensive-looking 4x4s to my left.

There was worse than that ahead. The pubs had vomited out hundreds of drunken party-goers onto the street and it was obvious virtually all taxi drivers had stopped working because of the conditions. I expected this. It always happens. Great service our taxi folks provide, eh?

Main Street was like glass. Solid ice. With taxis like hens’ teeth and so many customers it was mayhem. People rushed and stumbled uncaring of their safety from one side of the street to the other at the sight of an approaching cab. Still on an incline, neither the car in front, the cops behind nor I could have stopped. Only by keeping moving were we maintaining any control.

The passenger in the Garda car had his head out the window screaming at people to stay on the f**king footpaths.

As the road rose up to the deserted main taxi rank stopping was both doable and done. This is where the snowball fight was on. One missile, clearly intended for my car, struck the passenger window. I watched in the rear view mirror and giggled as the cop hopped out and bundled my attacker in the back. (They let him out further down the town. Presumably the intention was to give all the snowballers a warning).

No snowball fights at the second, and equally deserted, taxi rank, but an unending stream of people staggering across the street. And standing on it which forced me to a standstill at the narrowest point. The boys in blue behind me flashed their blue lights and unleashed a litany of blue language. The way cleared.

From there to the M7/N7 was fine. Relatively. Back to the top gear and low revs trick and I tipped along. There were only a few cars on the carriageway. I nudged out to the centre of the three lanes thinking if I did lose control I would have more room to correct. Lucky move. As I passed under the J8 bridge I hit pure ice and the car fishtailed, sending me far into the left lane.

Except for a bit of bother trying to come to a halt on the slope down to my gate the rest of the journey home was uneventful. It took an hour in all.

While the thrill of my mini-adventure began to sink in something else slowly dawned on me: As I was about to set out, my sole source of accurate real-time information of what conditions were like was Twitter.

The most recent AA Roadwatch bulletin was from long before midnight. The black ice it mentioned on the M7 was hard-packed white snow when I reached it. Metcheck.com gave 0.0mm precipitation throughout the night. Local radio played music. Met Éireann gave vague warnings for wide geographical areas and their current weather was 30minutes after the fact, as was their precipitation map. Sites like the Irish Times, Irish Independent, BreakingNews.ie and RTÉ were either shut down for the night or were reflecting conditions from hours back.

AcuWeather.com came closest to the reality it must be said. And the National Roads Authority weather station info, while updated only hourly and with few monitoring stations, gave information on road and air temperatures from which conditions could be deduced.

But it was Twitter, with, I admit, a little help from the Met Éireann rainfall radar, best prepared me for what was ahead. The animated map gave me the general path the snow was taking. Tweets and some Twitpics, Qiks etc. from people I follow let me know in real-time in what parts of Dublin city and county it had begun and how much (deep) it was. Similar Tweets then came from further north in Kildare so I knew it was getting close.

Some searches on Twitter informed me of the state of the roads. The odd, very odd, Tweet from someone drunk in Naas; someone just home cursing the ice at a certain spot; someone watching cars skid outside their house. If it hadn’t been the aftermath of New Year’s Eve I’m certain the volume would have been far greater, but there were enough to prepare me.

In all, I enjoyed my wee adventure. And thanks to Twitter, and not the MSM, I knew I could make the trip safely. Without Twitter I could have had a restless night on a couch and have been wiping kids’ noses, changing nappies and reading more stories on New Year’s morning.

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