By Luke Salkeld
Motorists are being warned to prepare for chaos on the roads as snow returns to Britain this week
After the coldest January in more than 20 years, gardeners were at last allowing their fancy to turn to thoughts of spring.
But any buds about to poke their way through the soil would be advised to stay put because yet another spell of icy weather is on the way.
Some parts will have up to five inches of snow, and ice is expected to cause chaos on the roads as temperatures drop to as low as -6c.
However, it will be nothing like as bad as the ‘Snowmageddon’ that has descended on parts of America, with Washington DC smothered in as much as 32 inches.
President Obama used the term after a blizzard produced one of the biggest snowfalls for a century
The storm paralysed travel and left hundreds of thousands without power. When the President ventured out of the White House, his motorcade was involved in a minor crash on icy roads
On the other side of North America, organisers of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver found themselves having to import thousands of tons of snow after the warmest January there on record.
Back in Britain Andrew Sibley, of the Met Office, said temperatures will begin to drop today but the worst of it will come between Wednesday and Friday.
‘It will feel very cold later in the week because of a brisk north-easterly wind. In eastern counties there will be significant snow.’
Mr Sibley said western parts would have the coldest temperatures because of a lack of cloud cover.
‘They will drop to -5c or -6c overnight during the week, while eastern parts will drop to -2c or -3c, still well below freezing.’
The average temperature last month of 1.1c (34f) was colder than for any January since 1987 – and the ninth-lowest in the past 100 years.
Parts of eastern Scotland and North-East England saw snow as deep as 23 inches, while Altnaharra in Sutherland recorded the lowest temperature of the month, at -22.3c (-8.1f) overnight on January 7 and 8.
According to climatologist Philip Eden that was the coldest anywhere in Britain for 14 years.
He added: ‘The severity of the cold period during the first half was such that January turned out to be the coldest since 1987.’
source: dailymail
Motorists are being warned to prepare for chaos on the roads as snow returns to Britain this week
On the other side of North America, organisers of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver found themselves having to import thousands of tons of snow after the warmest January there on record.
