Last week temperatures plummeted in the United States to below freezing bringing with it “a life-threatening wind chill” according to the National Weather Service. The cause of this unusual weather was the ‘polar vortex’, a large pocket of extremely cold air. It is normal for a polar vortex to be in the high Arctic during the winter period. However, this year it shifted southward instead of northward, which had a massive effect in most parts of North America even in the usually warm south. The lowest temperature in the country was recorded on Tuesday January 6, 2015 in a small town called Embarrass in the state of Minnesota. It was an alarming -35F. The authorities urged residents to remain indoors for their own safety. The true extent of the freezing cold temperatures was shown by Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist in Wisconsin, who filmed himself throwing a pot of boiling water into the air which immediately turned to snow. He uploaded the video on YouTube and it now has over 1,250,000 views. Many other people imitated the clever demonstration.
The cold snap now appears to have ended and the attention has turned to counting the cost of it. While the most noticeable effect of the extreme wintry weather was school closures and emergency accommodations provided to the homeless, businesses were also affected. The biggest impact was felt by the airline industry, which was forced to cancel more than 3,700 flights. This caused huge disruption for travellers and a substantial financial loss of between $50 million to $100 million for the airlines. The US economy also suffered considerably with an estimated $5 billion spent on disaster cleanup. This included repairing the damage caused to water pipes as well as clearing snow from the roads. Many employees were unable to go to work, which cost both the state and companies a large amount of money. The lengthy commuting delays also had a negative impact on production.
We are no stranger to natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and bushfires. Nevertheless, it is not always as prepared as it should be for the possible catastrophic consequences arising from these types of events. Companies in particular should learn from this unexpected episode and be more organized in case it happens again. This seems quite likely especially when the experts are becoming more and more concerned about global warming. I would strongly encourage every business owner to take out insurance against losses arising from natural disasters. In addition, they need to put a contingency plan in place to deal with high absenteeism resulting from extremely bad weather. Maybe employees could do some work from home or it might be possible to outsource some production to another company that is not affected by the same natural disaster for a short period of time. The point is to be prepared because if you fail to plan then you plan to fail.
