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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

February 2009 Great Britain and Ireland snowfall

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February 2009 Great Britain and Ireland snowfall (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Fails WP:NOTNEWS. Completely unremarkable event. Every year, England (and I use the term advisedly) has a couple of inches of snow, the entire transport system grinds to a halt, and many people take the opportunity to have a day off work. This year wasn't significantly different from any other. The Winter of 1963 it was not. The Great Storm of 1987 it was not. We should not, IMO, have an article on it. Tevildo (talk) 19:50, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep the fact that they had to shut down London for the first time in four years (since 7/7) makes this notable. And not to invoke WP:WAX, but this was actually an extreme weather storm for the UK, unlike the dozens of weather events in the US which have articles, despite the levels of snow being comparable (and the US, as a rule, gets more snow than the UK, thank you Gulf Steam) Sceptre (talk) 22:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or Re-name - This was a notable event, as confirmed by the amount of press coverage from reliable sources in the refs section. Also, as noted above, it was the ending of an eighteen year run of warmer winters. It may be a little long-winded and could be re-named Winter of 2008-2009. Baffle gab1978 (talk) 22:45, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep - It's hard to compare recent events to events more than 50 years ago. This is because knowledge of weather and the quality of homes (to protect people) is much improved. The fact that this storm shut down entire public transit systems is fairly significant IMO. Cyclonebiskit (talk) 22:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - It was the thing on the news, and had a huge amount of press coverage. It was one of the worst snowstorms for years in the UK, as well. The long list of references alone shows that it deserves an article. Also, if you delete this, don't you think that such articles as January 2009 Central Plains and Midwest ice storm could also go? Darth Newdar (talk) 15:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Snowball keep... Hehe, I'm here all day. Lugnuts (talk) 17:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Sorry to spoil the party, even though when I go against the herd it's usually to defend articles against pile-on deletion !votes. I must say that I'm rather bemused by this article, and by the fact that so many people are defending it. I lived through this, and yes, it was a minor inconvenience, but should it really be considered to be an encyclopedic event going beyond WP:NOT#NEWS? All of the references are to news articles dated from when this was happening, rather than any sources discussing it as a historic event. If equivalent events in the United States have articles then I would question those as well. Many more severe weather events happen outside the Western Anglophone world that nobody would dream of creating an English Wikipedia article about. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:41, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This weather event went far beyond routine news coverage. It is rather pointless debating whether this will become a noted historical bad weather yardstick in the future to fully overcome the spirit of NOT#NEWS (which is so often ignored at Afd for absolute rubbish like Muslim Massacre), seeing as it is only a few months since it happened, let alone years. MickMacNee (talk) 22:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Will it get confusing if we invoke the snowball clause on an article about snow? Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 07:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - We've had it happen before: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The wrong kind of snow. DitzyNizzy (aka Jess)|(talk to me)|(What I've done) 10:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Whilst I agree with the nom, this caused a hell of a lot of disruption in the United Kingdom (at one stage, only two of the seven people that I work with managed to make it in - and I work in Preston), had a documentary made about it, caused London to shut down for the first time since the July 7 attacks (I refuse to call it "7/7") and was even on the front page of WP in the "In The News" section. Surely all that stuff makes it notable. DitzyNizzy (aka Jess)|(talk to me)|(What I've done) 10:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry - I left a bit out: the opening should have read "Whilst I would agree with the nom if it was a usual occurance in Britain". (Also, to the person who alluded to the storm of 1987 - that only affected part of the country: this snow affected most - if not all - of it.) DitzyNizzy (aka Jess)|(talk to me)|(What I've done) 10:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - We don't get weather like this very often nowadays in the United Kingdom (especially the Southern part) so it might not seem like a lot to other people/countries used to heavy snowfall. But it was a lot to us as we are not used to such heavy widespread snowfall. It'll be a shame if this does get deleted. Pebbles1979 —Preceding undated comment added 19:53, 2 June 2009 (UTC).[reply]
  • Keep Per most of the comments above and because the fall out from this is continuing now with criticism of how the authorities handled it - see this BBC article for instance from the last few days. While the roads needed salting then, don't delete and salt this article. (sorry could not resist that last sentence!) Davewild (talk) 20:03, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. That's the first proper argument I've seen for keeping this - some coverage from later than the immediate aftermath of these events. I'm still not totally convinced about the long-term significance of this, so I won't strike my delete opinion, and anyway, it wouldn't make any difference to the imminent snow. The thing that really worries me is that my reading of that BBC article makes it twice in as many days that I have agreed with Boris Johnson. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:13, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep (!), per just about everyone else - this is astonishing! It was deemed suitable for the Main Page and survived for days in a section which is now becoming notorious for the number of removed posts. This type of argument would see just about any article deleted a few months later! What I mean by that would be (current example) Air France Flight 447 is only one plane and planes crash all the time and it wasn't a record-breaking incident (which this spell of bad weather was) and more than 228 people die in the world every day anyway (if you want to be extreme). I or anyone could opt for delete in just about any news event if that were the case. --candle•wicke 00:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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