Is the UK uniquely bad when it comes to dealing with snow?

For the third year in a row the UK has suffered snow induced chaos, but why can't we cope?

One fundamental reason is the cost. The cost of grit, its storage and gritting machines is apparently too high to completely clear every road in Britain.

But how do countries such as CANADA cope?

Let's use airports as an example.  HUNDREDS of thousands of stranded UK air passengers could have been spared misery if airport bosses had planned better for the cold snap, according to an aviation expert.

Airports in CANADA allow planes to land and take off with minimal disruption.

How?

They are equipped with snow ploughs and under-runway heating mechanisms. They anticipate the bad weather quicker than we do. They do get much longer periods of bad weather but they invest in making sure they have got many snow ploughs on standby and people to clear the runway quickly.

The situation in the UK was preventable. This could have been planned for. The weather has been changing predictably and Gatwick doesn't seem to have anticipated this. Snow has fallen earlier each year and it needs to plan for that.