SNOW CHAOS
One in three Heathrow flights cancelled
HEAVY SNOW was forecast to bring transport chaos to much of the country today, with hundreds of flights cancelled and disruption on the roads.
At Heathrow 350 flights, a third of today’s total, were called off yesterday, before it had even begun snowing, while Gatwick also warned it may have to cancel services. The Met Office predicted that up to six inches of snow would fall overnight and early this morning, with temperatures falling to 10.4F (-12C) and wind chill making it feel significantly colder. It urged people to be prepared for heavy falls across Cumbria, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, North Yorkshire, the Peak District and the Midlands.
After more than a week of freezing conditions, the Prime Minister was briefed on the likely impact of the snow by emergency planners, while councils said they had called in extra staff to cope.
Yesterday saw the ice stretch across much of Britain, with skating on the Fens, frozen waterfalls in the Brecon Beacons and the Pennines blanketed in snow.
The sea froze off Dorset, and rivers and canals were covered in ice as the temperature stayed below freezing all day.
On the roads, the Highways Agency warned of the risk of ice, especially as rain falls on very cold road surfaces.
Gritters have been out in force since the cold snap began last Saturday and were out again last night, clearing snow from major routes. Air travellers are expected to be worst affected, however, with tens of thousands of passengers facing cancellations at Heathrow, which is used by 180,000 passengers every day.
Its owner, BAA, grounded many short-haul flights to domestic and European destinations in an attempt to ensure that long-haul routes are not disrupted.
BAA was heavily criticised when heavy snow crippled Heathrow for four days in December 2010 and has invested £36million in extra snow and ice clearing equipment. It insisted that today’s cancellations were critical to its “resilience” plans.
The airport said it needed to reduce the number of takeoffs and landings in order to ensure safety in foggy conditions and to clear snow from
the stands and runways. It argued that others airports have more leeway to keep planes taking off and landing in times of severe weather because they do not operate at full capacity.
A spokesman for BAA said: “The severe weather being forecast will reduce the capacity of the airport and without reductions to the flight schedule there would be significant disruption to flights and passengers at Heathrow. We have to do this because we are at 99 per cent capacity. When other airports get heavy snow they have slack in the system which allows them to clear any backlog of delays.”
The Heathrow cancellations are in contrast to Moscow Airport where, despite even colder conditions, there were no plans to cancel flights today. The cancellations infuriated many passengers, with one joking on Twitter: “Heathrow spokesman on flight cancellations, ‘Well we didn’t think there would be a winter this year’.”
Gatwick warned passengers to expect some disruption but did not order cancellations.
The Department for Transport maintained that it was better prepared than ever for severe winter weather. It said salt stocks stood at more than 2.4 million tons – nearly double last year’s levels.
The Local Government Association said council staff and volunteers would be working to care for the vulnerable. Householders were being encouraged to call in on elderly neighbours.
The coldest temperature recorded on Friday night was 9.48F (-12.4C) in South Newington, Oxfordshire, making it the coldest night of the winter so far.
Billy Payne, a forecaster with Meteogroup, said: “There will be some significant accumulations of snow quite widely across much of England. Away from the South West and across eastern parts of Scotland we are looking at 1.9in to 3.9in of snow in many areas.” Although it will remain cold this week, rain will replace snow on Monday, becoming more widespread on Tuesday and Wednesday.
A string of football matches fell victim to the weather yesterday, including Portsmouth’s home match against Hull City, which was postponed due to a frozen pitch. Racing was also heavily hit, with the meeting at Ffos Las in south Wales scrapped, while today’s meeting at Kempton will be subject to an inspection. Sales of men’s gloves, scarves and hats were reported to have tripled, while women were buying twice as many of these items as usual. Sainsbury’s also reported a rise in sales of deicer, scrapers and shovels and a 24 per cent increase in sales of cold and flu remedies.
The cold snap has spread from eastern Europe. More than 220 people have died across the continent as a result of the sub-zero conditions, with Ukraine bearing the heaviest toll of 122 dead.
Thousands have been trapped in mountain villages in Serbia, while Venice’s canals started freezing over and Rome had its heaviest snowfall for 27 years.