UK prepares for freezing weekend

Forecasters have warned of very low temperatures overnight, after snow brought a fifth day of chaos to the UK.

Road, rail and air transport was again badly affected, while hundreds of schools were again closed.

The West Country and south Wales were worst-hit, with Okehampton in west Devon seeing 22in (55cm) of snow.

Heavy snow, some of it a foot (30cm) deep, cut off some villages in Devon and Somerset and snow continued into Friday.

The bad weather left 21,000 homes across the West Country without power.

Western Power Distribution (WPD) said 12,000 residents in Devon were without electricity.

Another 8,000 homes in the Taunton area were also without power.

The AA had received more than 3,000 callouts by 0930 GMT on Friday, double its normal workload, and it warned that shortages of road salt had created a "road safety crisis".

It said that by the end of Friday it expected to have answered 70,000 calls since Monday.

Emergency services had spent Thursday night rescuing about 200 stranded motorists from the A38 at Haldon Hill, near Exeter, Devon after the weather deteriorated suddenly.

A few miles west, the Army was called in to pick up about 60 people stuck on the A386.

Many drivers in Devon and Cornwall spent Thursday night in emergency centres.

Some councils in England have been running out of road salt, with the Highways Agency saying supplies were "very limited".

Authorities in Wiltshire hoped to get 500 tonnes of salt from Devon County Council.

Stocks in West Berkshire are at 20% of normal levels and are expected to last only another two or three days.


Cheshire-based Salt Union said staff were working around the clock but still could not meet demand.

A container ship is travelling from Spain with 40,000 tonnes of salt, and another ship is also heading to the UK with salt from Germany. Both are expected to dock on Wednesday.



Why the roads are now death-traps in UK.
The roads now resemble third world countries as gritting salt is running low in UK enabling authorities to only grit main roads.