Oh, when the weather outside is frightful...
THE first proper snowfall of winter closed roads and brought traffic to a standstill across the North East – and led to stunning winter wonderland scenes throughout the region.
Yesterday’s flurry of snowflakes proved, as ever, a mixed blessing, with some delighted by the wintry weather and others held up or left grumbling in the cold and wet.
At Beamish Museum, staff celebrated, tweeting ‘It’s a winter wonderland today’ alongside pictures of its 1900s town under an icy carpet.
At Stephenson Memorial Primary School in Howdon, Wallsend, children were making snowballs and Year Five teacher Craig Johnson tweeted: “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
As #SnowWatch began to trend on Twitter in the region, hundreds of people shared pictures of their hometowns
NORTH EAST BECOMES WINTER WONDERLAND
transformed by a blanket of snow.
Snow even began to stick at the coast, leading to rare photos of beaches covered in white. There was even the odd crack of thunder
In South Shields, Alison Brooks said: “It’s a winter wonderland here in South Shields. Been a blizzard. The sun is out now, but covered in snow.”
Meanwhile, some eyebrows were raised as Sunderland’s Ice Gala event was cancelled...because of the frozen conditions.
On the roads, the A68 at Kiln Pitt Hill in Northumberland, south of Riding Mill, was closed by police, after cars and HGVs became stuck in the snow.
There were a number of crashes, which may have been related to the treacherous weather, including a collision on the A1(M) southbound between Bowburn and Bradbury in County Durham, and a three vehicle pile-up on the A690 at Barnes Park roundabout in Sunderland.
Two cars were caught in a collision at Pickering Drive in Blaydon – police were soon on scene, and no one was believed to have been hurt.
A number of cars became stuck on the Moor Road between Alnwick and Rothbury, and the B6342 at Garleigh Moor, Northumberland, became impassible, with a minibus full of school children unharmed but stuck in the snow.