SO, the first sign of snow brings chaos to Darwen again (LET, January 12).

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Council is unprepared, understaffed, ill-equipped or incompetent. The problem, as explained to your newspaper by a spokeswoman, was that, once it had started, the snow continued to fall.

This is, of course, quite without precedent: we must hope that in future, snow falls for no more than about a minute which, as we all know, is what has always happened before.

DAVID AINSWORTH, Earnsdale Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.