NOW that we're all thawing out from the big freeze, let's reflect on lessons to be learned from the arctic spell which started well before Christmas.
The most obvious aftermath is the plethora of potholes which are again making road travel uncomfortable at the very least, and downright dangerous with the more extreme examples.
Last winter's legacy of suspension-breaking mini-craters seemed to l
ast until the summer, and it might be too optimistic to hope that we won't be in for a repeat performance this second time around.
Potholes are created by water penetrating the road surface, expanding when freezing and thus fracturing the upper layers, and the resulting detritus is dispersed to leave those cavities.
The process is exacerbated with further snow/rain freezing, and the highways authorities find they're playing catch-up with the rash of road defects which arouse such fury among those of us who have to put up with them.
The ideal answer, of course, is to stop moisture penetrating the road in the first place.
This entails an expensive, on-going programme of effective preventative maintenance which is bad news at time when financial cut-backs are sought.
Yet, it's false economy not to keep a society's infrastructure in good order.
The necessary expense will catch up with us sooner or later – and it will cost more in the long run.
Take, for example, the enormous sums Southern Water is now having to spend in reducing main-pipe leakages, due to under-investment in the past.
On a more positive note, it has been cheering this past week to see local authority workers descending en-masse on many of Worthing's major thoroughfares to clear packed ice and snow from pavements which had become a potential death-trap for all pedestrians.
Even traffic wardens (civil enforcement officers) were spotted doing their bit with the shovels, earning a few Brownie points to set against their unpopularity in other directions!
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