Travel was disrupted by the coldest day in the UK since 2012

Travel was disrupted, householders suffered power cuts and schools were shut as heavy snow swept across the UK on the coldest day for seven years.

Motorists were stranded in vehicles and trains and planes were delayed or cancelled. Emergency services up and down the UK said they were being inundated and called on people to only travel if they really needed to.

The coldest spot was Braemar in north-east Scotland, where residents shivered in a temperature of -14.4C (6.1F), the Met Office said – the lowest in the UK since 2012 when it reached -15.6C (3.9F) at Holbeach, Lincolnshire.

An amber severe weather warning – meaning there is a potential risk to life and property – was in place for parts of south England and Wales on Thursday with the Met Office predicting up to 10cm of snow could fall and cut off communities especially on high ground.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/31/heavy-snow-disrupts-travel-on-coldest-day-in-uk-for-seven-years

And of course, I had to be here for it ... chime in with your nasty weather stories!

Not sure people can complain over the cold here, in regards to elsewhere. I hear in places in the US its -40. Makes people look whimps in comparrison mate.

Thor wrote:
Not sure people can complain over the cold here, in regards to elsewhere. I hear in places in the US its -40. Makes people look whimps in comparrison mate.

I know, isn't it crazy? Cities were literally warning people it could be dangerous or fatal to remain outside for more than a few minutes. The ones who know what they're doing are wearing polar gear.

Same here. Not California, which is delightful, but the lake-effect of the Great Lakes, onto say the Dakotas, down to Mississippi and up to the Atlantic.

Fooking freezing.

Weather is fine here.

Temp in central Oz has been up around 50°+C several times over recent weeks...

Over on the coasts, east and south, that heat pumping out of there has seen heat waves in the high 30s and 40s..

Over Oct/Nov/Dec' last year, Queensland was experiencing severe bushfires in several regions that hadn't previously seen wildfires in living memory.

And today, some parts of Qld have been copping flash flooding @ "one-in-one-hundred-years" levels, with monsoonal rains being heavy way up north, (but only drizzling showers down here..) --  meaning yet again that many people are experiencing flooding in their neighbourhoods for the first time in their lives..

Down here, NSW-wide we have just had the hottest and driest January on record --  that virtually means since 1788...

HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR.....as that old sea dog Shady used to say... some of today's shiverin' snowflakes should have been around in 1946/7 and 1962/3.

Really old 'uns like Nicko and me probably remember '47 most of all - two years after the end of the war with Britain bankrupt and suffering critical shortages of fuel and food. A quarter of an inch of solid ice on the inside of widows and not enough coal to heat even one room - and the snow drifts were so deep that we used to make caves in them.

And our parents still had to get to work on time and we kids were expected to be in school for 9am assembly.

In '63 my house had just been built and my wife and I moved in just before a megafreeze in December led to heavy snowfall starting on Boxing Day. The ground around the house still hadn't settled after the construction work and the underground water pipes froze solid for more than a month.

Luckily we were cut off by snow for only two days before local farmers battered their way through the drifts with their heavy machinery...and I was bawled out by my boss for "skipping work"!

Today, a couple of centimeters of snow and the schools close (some teachers seem to need only a forecast of snow to shut the place down causing chaos for parents), roads are blocked within minutes, the social media is full of discussions about workers "rights" to miss showing up and Nanny State doomsayers are on the airwaves with solemn warnings about the dangers of breathing, falling and even kids throwing bloody snowballs!

I wasn't around for the '47 do but I was for the '62/63 one, the school in the village was closed due to large snow drifts on the roads into the village which on both sides are almost perpendicular. We children helped out digging sheep out of drifts and taking feed to the animals, we were about waist deep in some fields. I think it was '83 was pretty bad for about a week, I couldn't get to work but being a good girl I let them take three days off my annual leave and made up the rest of the time over the next few weeks. My works was used by the emergency services and the army as a base for bringing in supplies by helicopter and using four wheel drive vehicles to take stuff out to areas off the beaten track. Prince Charles visited because of that to meet the workers, mind you al the local dignitaries were inside eating and meeting while the actual workers were lined up outside

A baby girl was abandoned in a park last night in East London..
Amazingly, in spite of freezing temperatures she is said to be doing OK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47083204