10.18am:

Crunching through the snow to an engagement party last night we saw a fox pee on a snowman. But as well as bringing delight, heavy snow also inflicts chaos and misery. One of the guests last night - the fiancee no less - failed to make it as her on-again, off-again flight from Belfast was finally cancelled. Today, thousands of people remain stuck in aiports, having to spend the night sleeping under foil blankets. The roads are a mess and trains face severe delays.

Here's a summary of how things stand at the moment.

The M25 is closed in both directions between junctions five and six after a tanker which overturned near Clackett Lane Service at about 9am. The tanker, which was carrying liquid petroleum gas (LPG) was travelling clockwise when it overturned.

Heathrow closed to landings, with only a "handful" of departures.. Gatwick has reopened but widespread disruption expected.

Race meetings were abandoned and football fixtures cancelled.

10.32am:

A rather sad story from PA

A man hoping to be home in time for Christmas after being critically injured in Thailand has not yet made it back to the UK because of the hazardous weather conditions. Antony Giles, 23, was seriously hurt when he was in a crash with a car while riding as a passenger on his friend's moped in the capital Bangkok last month. He suffered serious injuries to his legs, arm and chest and has since been receiving treatment in a Bangkok hospital. Last week he was allowed to move out of hospital and into a nearby hotel so he could return for daily treatment. His parents, Debbie and Allan, have been in Thailand with their son since the accident and were hoping to fly back to the UK with him last night after a massive fundraising campaign by his family and help from St John Ambulance. But the flight was diverted to Copenhagen due to appalling weather at Heathrow and he spent the night in a hotel room in Denmark rather than the expected comfort of his own room at home in Stapleford, Nottingham.

10.36am:

Here's the Guardian's latest story on the snow chaos, written by yours truly. Oh I forgot to say, if you have tales of woe or delight please post them below.

10.44am:

Here is a weather warning from the BBC's weather centre:

Snow will continue to affect the north and east of Scotland and northeast England. Another 5 to 10cm is likely with up to 15cm in places. Edinburgh and Lothian will be particulary badly affected, with up to 20cm possible. Driving conditions will be dangerous.

11.03am:

Heavy snow and icy temperatures are affecting many parts of Europe not just the UK. The Associated Press has this roundup.

In Italy, the Autostrada of the sun, the country's main north-south highway was jammed with hundreds of vehicles, whose chilly occupants slept in their cars, vans or trucks... Paris was sprinkled with a light coat of snow overnight, as many people prepared to set off on their Christmas vacations. More snow was predicted Saturday, leading civil aviation authorities to cancel 15% of flights at Charles de Gaulle airport between 4 pm (1500 GMT) and 11 pm (2200 GMT). Many flights were also cancelled in northeastern France, where snow already blanketed the ground, and services were also cancelled at the airports in the cities of Nantes and Rennes. Significant numbers of domestic and European flights were cancelled at Germany's Frankfurt airport as it dealt with the disruption. Germany's railway operator Deutsche Bahn said it was pressing into service all the trains it could though some journeys were subject to delays. The icy weather also swept over large parts of Scandinavia, causing problems particularly in Denmark, where dozens of flights were cancelled at the airport in Copenhagen. According to Danish news agency Ritzau, train traffic between Denmark and southern Sweden was also disrupted because of track problems, partly due to the snow, forcing passengers to instead take buses between the two countries.

11.15am:

The Met Office has this useful page where you can click on a specific region in Britain for weather warnings. Road conditions for Wales look particularly bad as it says: "There is a continuing risk of widespread ice on untreated surfaces during Sunday afternoon, Sunday night and Monday morning. The public are advised to take extra care and refer to Traffic Wales for further advice on road conditions."

11.36am:

This one is for conanthebarbarian, who accuses this blog of being all about the south. Our northern lad, Martin Wainwright, has just sent this from Leeds. As he says, the boot's on the othe foot for once with the north not so badly off weather wise, compared to down south.

Most of Northern England is in the unusual winter position of enjoying sunshine and normal transport links while the pain falls elsewhere. Regional airports are taking flights unable to land at Heathrow and Gatwick and road problems are confined to black ice, because temperatures fell as low as minus 11C (12F) overnight. Warnings of fresh snow are in force in the northeast, however, and the handsome herd of deer at Raby Castle in county Durham posed picturesquely today in a snow flurry for sledgers and passers-by.

But most of the three northern regions look likely to get away today with only the snow currently on the ground which is not going to go anywhere as long as temperatures remain so low. The icy chill may have claimed one victim early this week in 36-year-old Michael Swift from Hartlepool who was found frozen to death near Seaton Carew railway station. Detectives appealed today to anyone in touch with him on Wednesday before he collapsed close to the tracks where his body was discovered shortly after midnight the next day.

Temperatures have been close to sub-zero all week in the area and a post-mortem established that Swift died of hypothermia. Most headlines here, though, sideline weather news to references about the south, with more attention given to tax protesters at Topshop in Manchester or the threat of 1,500 police job cuts in West Yorkshire. But reporters have uncovered some angles to winter's problems: a homeless man's ingenious mini-igloo in York and a spate of thefts in Leeds targeting cars with Christmas presents left on show inside.

Vulnerable elderly people in Darlington are meanwhile to get extra help through the local community foundation's winter relief appeal, with a return of snow forecast in that part of Durham before Christmas Eve. Good news too at Fylingdales, famous for its early warning station high on the weather-battered North York Moors. The village has just opened a £200,000 'eco-hall' for community use, whose solar panels are lapping energy in today's alpine sunshine to help a biomass boiler cope during the Christmas holiday's expected period of prolonged chill.

11.47am:

Labour's shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, has been having a go a the transport secretary, Philip Hammond, who took a hammering last time Britain seized up a few weeks ago in snow and icy weather. Johnson told Sky News: "It is a big issue when people believe the government has left them to it: 'Get a shovel or stay at home.' Governing is about more than that when you hit a crisis...It's a false economy, when budgets are squeezed, to cut back on salt supplies, because you damage the economy. This is one of the big worries for the government: what does this do in terms of the economy because if people aren't getting out to the shops, that lack of demand has an effect."

Johnson pointed out that the Scottish transport minister, Stewart Stevenson, had to resign earlier this month because of his handling of travel problems caused by heavy snow.

12.02pm:

For the latest updates on Britain's major roads, the highways agency is useful on current traffic information. The M25 clockwise remains closed between junctions J5 and J6, due to that overturned tanker and the road is not expected to re-open until 7:30 pm.

12.14pm:

This is part of the the statement from BAA, which runs several of Britain's airports, as to why there won't be departures from Heathrow today.

This morning, we listened carefully to the advice of our airside operations team and reluctantly judged that while Heathrow's northern runway remains clear, the change in temperature overnight led to a significant build up of ice on parking stands around the planes and this requires the airfield to remain closed until it is safe to move planes around.

We have 200 aircraft parking stands and have a team of several hundred people working to treat these airside areas and to keep passengers in the terminal as warm and as comfortable as possible while we do everything we can to get Heathrow moving. We are removing 30 tonnes of snow from each stand, but the temperature remains firmly below zero and Heathrow's capacity is limited to the extent that all parking stands are occupied by aircraft, making the job of clearing and treating them more difficult.

The Daily Mail website reports on "an angry telephone exchange" yesterday between BA chief executive Willie Walsh and Colin Matthews, chief executive of BAA.

"Mr Walsh was said to be furious about remarks made by a BAA spokesman earlier that the de-icing of aircraft was 'the responsibility of individual airlines'," the Mail reports.

12.30pm:

Good news for Cardiff and Northampton rugby union fans. Their Heineken cup match in Cardiff is to go ahead this afternoon. The match between Edinburgh and Castres at Murrayfield, howver, has been called off. In the Barclays premier league, the big match between Chelsea and Manchester United at Stamford Bridge is cancelled as well as the derby between West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers and the Blackpool-Tottenham Hotspur fixture.

12.50pm:

My colleague Maev Kennedy, who has just reached Heathrow airport after a two-hour tube ride from central London, says there is a surprising number of people still making their way out the airport because they have been unable to to phone their airlines or to get clear information from airline websites. She met one couple who have been trying to get to Australia since Friday. They were on their way to Heathrow from a hotel in Euston where they are paying £100 a night because they need more stuff from luggage they left at the airport. Maev also spoke to a Finnish cook at a vegetarian restaurant who is trying to get to southeast Finland where the temperature is -22C. Jonna Lehto told Maev: "I really can't comprehend this. This is the first time in my life I have had to come to grips with disruption like this and I am used to flying in very awful weather."

Maev ran into Michael from Oxford who had bedded himself down most comfortably on a luggage trolley he had inherited from a Chinese family of five who had slept on it the night before. He had left Oxford 5pm yesterday, hitched a lift to the train station and arrived at Heathrow 9.45pm last night. Michael, says Maev, was magnificently prepared, having brought loo rolls, food and his Mac computer with dongle. "It has taken a lot of therapy to get to this," he told Maev, who says there is a real air exhaustion at Heathrow. Maev quotes a woman from Qatar airlines who said: "There are a lot of people who think they're going somewhere. They ain't going nowhere."

1.04pm: Martin Wainwright has sent an update to his earlier missive on the north-south divide weatherwise.

The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for our eastern coast, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to the little rat's tail of Spurn Point, curling round into the Humber. Snow showers are expected along the seaboard and temperatures may fall tonight to -12C (10.4F), adding freezing fog to the existing risk of black ice on roads. This sounds more severe than the current Christmas card dusting of snow on the Yorkshire Wolds, although the highways agency and drivers' organisations are alreadty advising people to limit travel in the area to essential journeys. The market town of Driffield, for example, faces a Hobson's choice along the two ways out. Head for Beverley and it will be -6C (21F). Go the other way to York, and it's an even icier -8C (17F). The sunshine is fantastic, though. My own family illustrates the national split weatherwise between north and south. Son number one and his wife are trying to find a flight out of Shannon, where their Heathrow-bound plane from their home in Mexico City called it a day. Son number two texts disappointedly from the 11.10am from King's Cross, heading our way to Leeds and bang on time: "Distinct lack of snow north of London. What's going on?"

1.25pm:

Tuesday should be an interesting day on the issue of how Britain copes with severe weather. The government a few weeks ago ordered an urgent audit of the country's snow-readiness when much of Britain struggled with the early winter weather, with road, rail and air links closing in chaos. The transport secretary, Philip Hammond, called in David Quarmby, chair of the RAC Foundation, who last month published recommendations for coping with a prolonged freeze. Quarmby's review comes on Tuesday. Expect a lot of political argy-bargy.

1.33pm:

The outlook for driving tomorrow is not good. Alan Wilcock of the RAC, told the Press Association: "We're expecting another very busy day today as temperatures remain exceptionally low. The outlook for tomorrow morning's rush hour commute is equally bad - with the cold set to play havoc with cars and roads yet again."

He advises people who haven't used the car over the weekend to start it for five to ten minutes this evening - staying with the vehicle as it's running. "It may well be the difference between getting off your drive and calling us in the morning."

2.26pm:

Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has been on BBC News. Standing outdoors with a very Christmas card backdrop, he rejects charges of complacency and makes the point that the UK is not like Russia and Scandinavia, where severe winters are the norm, so therefore doesn't spend as much money on "winter resilience". He says, however, that he has asked the govenment's chief scientific adviser to assess whether the UK will be subjected to more extreme bouts of weather. If so, then the government will have to look at the cost-effectiveness of investments Britain will have to make.

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2.32pm:

The scene at Terminal 3 after passengers were forced to kip on the floor.

2.41pm:

The Royal Mail has put out a statement saying it plans to deliver up to a total of 14,000 – weather permitting - additional delivery rounds on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening. Today up to 4,000 delivery rounds are expected to take place across the UK. "After the evening deliveries planned for this week, Royal Mail expects its people will have carried out around 25,000 extra delivery rounds by the time Christmas arrives," Royal Mail said. In all, Royal Mail is planning evening deliveries to around two million homes iacross the UK this week on top of the normal Royal Mail deliveries during the day.

2.43pm:

A sightseeing tour bus on Southwark bridge, London in a snowstorm.

2.48pm:

More from Martin Wainwright of the north.

Lancashire and the north-west have deeper snow still lying after the heavy fall on Friday night which led to chaos on the M6 and nearby motorways, both those to the east Lancashire towns and the M58 to the Fylde and Blackpool. Snowmen have appeared by the famous resort's beach while tourists have been issued with a warning in the Lake District after groups posed for photographs on frozen Derwentwater near Keswick. The ice is unstable and John Wall, local station manager forCumbria fire and rescue, said: "Ice is deceptive. People assume that it can deal with more weight than it can. Emergency services are on standby with predictions that temperatures are likely to fall tonight from the current -6C (21F) to -12C (10.4F).

3.18pm:

The Associated Press has more on disruption elsewhere in Europe.



In Paris, where snow quickly turned to slush and big trucks were banned from roads, a Lady Gaga concert was cancelled because trucks carrying sets for the pop diva's extravagant show couldn't get to Bercy stadium... Many TGV fast trains were running slower than usual, tacking about 20 minutes on to each journey. Eurostar trains to Britain and Thalys trains to Belgium and the Netherlands were also affected. In Italy, Florence's airport remained closed Sunday morning amid snow and ice storms that blanketed Tuscany. At Frankfurt airport, Germany's biggest, more than 500 flights were canceled Sunday out of a planned total of 1,330 departures and arrivals. While the runways at Frankfurt itself were clear, flights were disrupted by problems elsewhere in Europe, with some passengers left waiting for their flights since Friday. At Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, snow ploughs had cleared three runways, and planes were arriving and leaving. However, because of problems at other European airports some 30 flights had been canceled by late morning.

3.29pm:

Want to check out the five-day forecast for your area? Try this Guardian page.

This is what the BBC weather page is saying for the coming week. It's more of the same.

The pressure pattern remains the same: High pressure to our north; low pressure to our south with a resultant northeasterly airflow. So still cold. With frost by night, severe where snow lies and lasting all day for large parts of the UK. Quite a few snow showers are indicated this week leaving a few centimetres wherever they fall. Models suggest at least average (rainfall equivalent) snowfall wherever you live but I think the wind direction will determine where significant falls occur. Sunshine should be above expectations in western Britain so you can assume that snowfall will be rare in the same areas.

4.20pm:

Heathrow airport is warning of further cancellations and delays tomorrow as well as in the days to come as airlines move diverted aircraft and crew back to their normal positions. It urges passengers to check with their airlines before travelling to the airport. BA says it has finalised its flying schedule until 6pm and will update ba.com as soon as it has more information about later flights.

Meanwhile, bookmakers are reporting record bets on a white Christmas. Punters staked over £110,000 in less than 48 hours on the possibility of snow falling on December 25, said Ladbrokes.

"Nobody's going anywhere but punters are going wild with white Christmas bets," said David Williams from Ladbrokes. "It started on Saturday when we saw a huge surge in bets and interest has continued to snowball. It's white outside but we're feeling a bit grey as the forecasters tell us to get ready for a massive pay out."

4.36pm:

The AA says it expects to have attended around 14,000 call-outs by the end of the day, about double the number of calls on a normal Sunday. The breakdown service was particularly busy in areas along the M40 corridor from Warwick, through Oxfordshire and down into London.

"There are thousands of roads with compacted snow which, on hills at minus temperatures, are like ski jumps," said Edmund King, AA president, "Our patrols have reported a lack of grit in many areas particularly on some key regional routes. We urge the highway authorities to plough and grit as many roads as possible so that we can keep Britain moving. We are experiencing more road closures and blockages caused by jack-knifed trucks or trucks stuck in the snow."

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4.44pm:

The cold has not put off this cyclist in New Brighton near Liverpool.

4.49pm:

Some good news about the M25. The highways agency says the section between junctions five and six has reopened after the overturned tanker was cleared at around 4pm, seven hours after the accident occurred. The backlog of vehicles is being slowly cleared.