More snow this morning - hurray!  I blame it on being born in the 1962/63 winter - the first five months of my life snow was normality.  There's a wonderful post here which expresses delight in the snow and raises sensible questions about cost/benefit of changing our infrastructure to cope with 5E-2 return frequency extreme events.  It doesn't use that language, Maggi is a musician not a risk assessor, but she's right I suspect - the sums probably don't stack up.

In the days when I did risk assessment sums for a living we used the Health & Safety Executive guidelines for 'cost-benefit analysis' on potential risk reduction measures.  The basic rule of thumb is obviously that the financial equivalent of the benefit needs to exceed the cost of the change.  As I recall it (and it's now ten years since I last did such an exercise) a risk reduction modification would only be required by the statutary bodies if the benefit was ten times the cost.  If the cost exceeded the benefit, and if the risk was already ALARP or broadly accpetable (both jargon for degrees of liveable with) then the modification would not be made, even though it would reduce risk.

I have no idea what the cost of snow ploughs, gritters and grit would be, I have no idea what the financial-equivalent of lost working days, road accidents, falls and fractures might be.  But maybe it is our attitude not our infra-structure we need to be changing?

As for me, I may venture out to see one or two house-bound folk, admire the lovely views across my garden, sup hot chocolate, possibly create some snow-folk (how PC is that!) and enjoy the relative quiet of an enforced slow week.