Two school buses have crashed on icy roads as Arctic weather conditions continue to cause widespread disruption and parts of the country brace for up to 30cm of snow.
Nine children and nine adults suffered minor injuries following a collision between a school coach and a Reading bus on icy roads in Wokingham on Wednesday.
One adult and a child were taken to Royal Berkshire hospital for further treatment, while another school bus crashed into a ditch in Kent after slipping on black ice. Police said no one was injured in that incident.
A Met Office yellow warning for snow and ice has been extended to midday on Thursday for Scotland and the north of England before Storm Goretti is expected to bring heavy snow later in the week.
About 400 homes in the north of Scotland had their power restored after morning outages, r as the region struggled with heavy snow that has cut off many rural areas, disrupted travel and seen hundreds of schools remain closed.
After Aberdeenshire council declared a major incident on Tuesday, the severe weather had abated by the end of Wednesday, allowing recovery efforts to begin in earnest.
The Scottish government said on Wednesday evening that across the transport network, road clearance work was progressing well. Scotland’s trunk road network is open, while most local roads are passable with care. All rail routes are now open, except for the Far North between Invergordon and Wick or Thurso, which is expected to open later today. All Highland and Islands airports are also open with no issues reported and ferry services are operating normally.
More than 400 schools across the Aberdeenshire, Moray Orkney and Shetland were closed for a third day, while pupils in the Highlands had an extra day off having been due to return from holiday on Wednesday, with a yellow warning for snow and ice in place all day in northern Scotland and people there told to expect a further 5-10cm of snow.
Temperatures are forecast to drop to as low as -6C in parts of rural Scotland and to just below freezing more widely overnight, the Met Office said.
Meanwhile, the rest of the UK is braced for further stormy weather with the Met Office chief forecaster Neil Armstrong describing Storm Goretti as a “multi-hazard event”, bringing heavy rain, strong winds and snow from Thursday.
Armstrong said 5-10cm of snow was likely in Wales and the Midlands, with 15-25cm in some places, and a potential for up to 30cm locally.
Strong winds with gusts of 50-60mph will likely affect south-western areas on Thursday afternoon and evening, with gusts of 60-70mph along exposed hills and coasts, the Met Office said.
A yellow snow warning has been issued for a large part of England and much of Wales, and will be in place from 6pm on Thursday until midday on Friday.
The Met Office has also issued an amber warning for heavy snow from Thursday evening into Friday, covering parts of Wales, the Midlands and South Yorkshire.
Forecasters said that Goretti could mean delays or cancellations to trains and planes, rural communities may be cut off, with power cuts or disruption to mobile signal also likely.
The warning, which comes into force at 8pm on Thursday and ends at 9am on Friday, stretches from Sheffield in the north, down to Leicester, and across much of the West Midlands and into Wales.
An amber wind warning from 5pm to 11pm on Thursday has also been issued across parts of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, as forecasters warn of 80-90 mph gusts in “exposed places”.
A yellow rain warning has been issued across the east of England from 6pm on Thursday to 9pm on Friday, and west Wales from midday on Thursday to 10am on Friday.
The recent drop in temperature has triggered cold weather payments for hundreds of thousands of households, designed to help elderly and vulnerable people with heating costs, the government said. Eligible households receive £25 automatically when temperatures are recorded or forecast to be zero degrees or below over seven consecutive days.
The UK Health Security Agency has extended amber cold health alerts for England as an early warning that adverse temperatures are likely to affect health and wellbeing, running until Sunday.
#Homes #north #Scotland #power #Arctic #weather #sweeps #weather