Snow and rain make a miserable Monday morning for millions of Britons
Snow and heavy rain made it a miserable Monday morning for millions today, with forecasters predicting further wintry weather for the rest of the week.
While motorists suffered a series of accidents on major routes, train passengers had to cope with delays caused by a series of overruns of weekend engineering work.
Forecaster Paul Knightley said: "It's been a rotten start to the week - cold, dark, wet and windy."
Snow fell today in large parts of southern England, with Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Suffolk all affected.
In Aberdeenshire, temperatures fell as low as minus 18C (around 0F) last night.
On the roads, a section of the A1 in Northumberland was closed because of an accident, while a vehicle fire shut part of the M54 in Shropshire.
On the M25, where drivers had to contend with heavy rain, an accident caused congestion on a stretch of the orbital motorway in Surrey. There were also hold-ups on the A23 in West Sussex due to an accident.
On the railways, buses had to replace trains on East Midlands Trains' services between Boston and Grantham in Lincolnshire because of over-running weekend engineering work.
Overruns also led to delays to train services in the Oxford area, as well as delays on East Coast services through Hitchin in Hertfordshire and on First TransPennine Express services, where buses had to replace trains between Scunthorpe and Cleethorpes.
Mr Knightley said: "Snow could drift into East Anglia later today and there's likely to be a sharp frost in many places tomorrow.
"Tuesday could also see sleet and snow in parts of Wales, the north Midlands and the Peak District."
He went on: "The rest of the week could see a battle between the moist air and the cold air. There could be a lot of rain and a lot of snow."
This winter could be the coldest since 1978/79, with final confirmation of where 2009/10 stands in the record books due at the end of this month.
Mr Knightley said: "This winter has certainly been a cold one in Britain and in many parts of the northern hemisphere.
"Yet records show that - globally - January was the hottest month ever."
