Brits are warned of further travel chaos tomorrow as the Met Office has issued fresh ice warnings across the United Kingdom.
The forecaster has said regions of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the South West of England will encounter icy conditions, with warnings in place from 5 pm today until 10 am tomorrow.
It said there will be increased chances of icy patches on roads, pavements and cycle paths, with injuries anticipated.
Overnight will become extremely cold with hard frost and isolated freezing fog patches across the country, causing traffic chaos for drivers and the possibility of some households facing power cuts.
Many awoke to ice and snow today as the United Kingdom continued to be hit by this week’s cold snap.
Manchester Airport was forced to close its runways amid snowstorms this morning after the coldest night of the year so far.
Temperatures plummeted to as low as -10.4C in regions of the country before Britain encountered yet another day of travel disruption.
Passengers at Manchester Airport said they were sitting on their planes for up to four hours after snowstorms made it impossible for flights to take off. Both runways at the airport were closed for about two hours.
According to tracking website FlightRadar24, at least 36 flights were delayed and two were withdrawn, and an aircraft which had travelled 4,000 miles from Atlanta in the US was redirected to London after being unable to land in the snow.
Images were shared of a snow-covered aircraft grounded on the tarmac at Manchester Airport as passengers waited for news.
Claire Staniforth and her husband Gary were two holidaymakers stuck on an aircraft. The couple said they boarded at 6.30 am this morning and were still waiting to fly over two and a half hours later.
A spokesperson for the airport said at about 6.20 am, following a period of heavy snowfall, they temporarily closed both runways, and that health and safety was always their highest priority and operations would continue at the earliest opportunity.
The spokesperson said that passengers were urged to contact their airline for the most up-to-date flight information.
The runways reopened almost two and a half hours later as passengers remained inside the terminal and onboard aeroplanes.
Just after 8.40 am, the airport said in a statement that following the temporary closure of their runways due to snow, they were happy to report that operations had resumed, and they thanked the passengers for their patience.
Of course, Norway has had bad winters for thousands of years, every year. The UK has a bad winter and everything comes to gridlock, but then we don’t get them that bad all the time so when we do it appears to be disastrous, and of course, countries like Norway and Russia get snow all the time, but they have a better infrastructure set up to deal with it.
But then we have to remember that countries like Norway are always colder than here in the United Kingdom. Wet snow that melts and re-freezes is far more dangerous to land a plane, but dry snow that doesn’t melt due to the colder conditions is much different.
The United Kingdom is far more susceptible to wet snow than other countries and therefore yields far more concerns.
Since the 2.5cm of snow in England which everyone called heavy, the US has had 2 feet of snow, now that’s heavy, but the media love to escalate and overdramatise everything they write about, but then I guess that’s what peddles over the internet and on paper stands.
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