Two more fatalities recorded on Friday as ‘Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma collide

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The UK is counting the cost of extraordinary blizzards that have brought parts of the country to a standstill, leaving death and destruction and bringing misery to tens of thousands of travellers.

Forecasters have warned that, as rain begins to fall on snow-covered roads, the potential for ice to form could bring further hazards. A yellow weather warning for ice is in place for much of England until 11am, while snow is still possible for Scotland and north-east England, with a warning in force until midnight.

Northern parts of the UK saw more snow overnight, with a further 5cm likely to fall by the end of the day.

As the weather starts to ease, local authorities and the government, emergency services, transport companies, retailers, motorists and householders will face hefty bills to restore normality after the dramatic snowfall and gales.

Major incidents were declared in Wiltshire, Avon and Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Hampshire after many hundreds of drivers were stranded in their vehicles.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cars and lorries stuck on A1 between Morpeth and Alnwick on Friday. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Two more deaths were recorded on Friday, taking the death toll in weather-related incidents to 10. A body was recovered in the search for Alison Fox, 51, who had got lost in the Ochil Hills near Stirling the previous afternoon and a 70-year-old man who had been rescued on Thursday from cliffs in Torquay, Devon, died in hospital.

On the roads, the A303 in Wiltshire and Devon was among the worst hit by the adverse weather, with some drivers stuck in their vehicles for 15 hours. Around 40 people, including a baby, were trapped in a bus.

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A stretch of the M62 between Rochdale and Huddersfield was closed and drivers stuck overnight. At one point 3,500 vehicles were stuck.

Army, RAF personnel and marines were deployed to help clear snow-covered roads in Greater Manchester, Lincolnshire, Edinburgh, Shropshire and Devon. The military also helped medical staff get into work.

The snow drifts were so deep in some parts that police fashioned “avalanche poles” of out pipework to hunt for buried cars.

Hundreds of operations were cancelled around the country, and an “internal critical incident” was declared by the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS foundation trust.

South Western Railway apologised to dozens of passengers who were stuck in trains overnight. A total of five trains were stranded on tracks between London and Weymouth, said Network Rail.

Philip Brown, 49, endured more than 15 hours on a train from London Waterloo to Bournemouth, Dorset, with 50 people on board.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man sleeps after being trapped overnight on a train in Brockenhurst. Photograph: Reuters

“I didn’t have any food or water, there were no buffet facilities on board, the train lost power and we lost heating and lights,” Brown said.



Friday’s deaths added to eight earlier in the week. On Thursday, a seven-year-old girl died after a car crashed into a house in Looe, Cornwall; a 75-year-old woman was found dead in a street in Leeds; and a 46-year-old van driver died after a collision in Hampshire.

On Wednesday, Steven Cavanagh, 60, died after being pulled from a lake in Welling, south-east London.



And on Tuesday a homeless man, named locally as Ben, died while sleeping in freezing temperatures in a tent in Retford, Nottinghamshire, and three women were killed in a car accident on the A15 at Baston, Lincolnshire.

More than 1,250 flights to or from UK and Irish airports were cancelled on Friday.

Thousands of people took the day off because they could not get to work or had to stay at home to look after children. The majority of schools in Wales, 400 schools in Northern Ireland and all schools in Cornwall were shut.

Around half a metre of snow fell within a few hours at St Athan, near Cardiff, and at Drumalbin, South Lanarkshire, and the Met Office said more snow and sleet could fall this weekend.

Play Video 1:25 Suffolk's snowy coastline captured in drone footage – video

Thursday saw the temperature slump to its lowest daily maximum on record for March, at –5.2C (22.6F) at Tredegar in south Wales.

On Friday the south-west of England bore the brunt of the severe weather as the system nicknamed the beast from the east combined with storm Emma.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pedestrians walk through the snow as a blizzard hits central London. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

At least 9,000 households lost power. Electricity North West blamed outages affecting 5,000 homes on 100 separate faults on its network. Western Power said around 4,000 homes in south-west England and Wales were without power.

Homes were flooded in Porthallow on the Lizard in Cornwall. Further east the main rail line at Dawlish was blocked, sparking complaints that the government is not doing enough to keep links between the south-west of England and the rest of the UK viable in extreme weather.

Waves up to five metres (16ft) high battered coastal areas, damaging beach huts, bringing down trees and telegraph poles and even cracking road surfaces.

In West Yorkshire, the snow unexpectedly led police to discover a cannabis farm. Two officers found an estimated £80,000-worth of the drug at a property when they noticed that only one house in a street in Keighley had no snow on its roof.

The extreme weather also led to an longer stay holiday for up to 2,000 people stranded at Center Parcs Longleat Forest in Wiltshire, who were told they could stay the weekend free of charge.