From 25th November until early December 2010, the north of England, Scotland and other regions experienced the worst snow falls for decades and temperatures as low as -20 degrees.
Many councils, utilities, charities and other organisations experienced a surge in people accessing their website to find information about the poor weather conditions, such as:
- Gritting
- Road and school closures
- Changes in rubbish collection
- Keeping safe in the cold
- Preventing burst pipes
Increased need for information
Many councils experienced a doubling of traffic each morning as school children, parents and teachers sought the latest information on school closures. This traffic brought some websites down. The charts below show two council websites on the same day (27th November). GOSS hosted sites had no loss of performance, the un-named Metropolitan Borough Council website suffered more.
North Yorkshire County Council have a website built by GOSS and recently also switched the hosting of their website to GOSS - just in time! The snow began falling and still is, find out how they coped here.
Comparison charts
On the same day, several councils were affected by heavy snow. Here are examples of how two faired.
Comments from Facebook
When an emergency situation is occurring, such as that caused by extreme snow, it is vital that websites available, and have full up-to-date information. Receiving numerous unfavourable comments on social network sites can be avoided if the relevant information is online. Regaining lost trust is a difficult task.
