Differences

I woke up to the news of chaos in parts of England, because of cold weather and snow. When going to BBC website I read the following:

Schools in parts of England and south Wales are shut and drivers are being urged to travel only if necessary.

I’m thinking “Oh my God how much snow have they got?”
I read on:

The deepest snow recorded so far is Sennybridge in the Brecon Beacons where 7cm (3in) is lying and overnight temperatures plummeted to -4C (25F).
Elsewhere, 5cm (2in) has fallen in Benson in Oxfordshire and 4cm (1.5in) in west Wales, south-west London and Wiltshire.

7 centimetres, really… oh yes,that's a lot... And Oh My God, down to -4 degrees is it – that’s awful…
When I got to the next part I just could not help but laugh out loud:

All schools in Birmingham, Solihull and Dudley have been closed, as well as some in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Essex, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and East Anglia.

More than 300 schools are also closed in Wales.

I remember when I was a child and still in school, when it was colder than -20 degrees we were allowed to stay inside the school buildings for the ten minutes between lessons, and when it got colder than -40 my mother would allow me to stay home from school – but I can’t remember that the school actually closed, don’t think it did.

The BBC article on the weather finishes with the following sentence:

People who must travel are advised to take warm clothes, food, water, a torch and a spade.

So this is when I ask my friends and family back in Norway, who I guess have at least 30 centimetres with snow now, I know they have experienced temperatures down to -20 in the last couple of weeks and the forecast still predicts -10 in the next days: have you remembered to bring food, water, a torch and a spade when you drive to work, to the stores or anywhere else you might think of going in your cars?