{"id":21671,"date":"2013-01-18T19:33:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T18:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uk.news.yahoo.com\/snow-rail-road-disruption-expected-043519027.html"},"modified":"2013-01-18T19:33:52","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T18:33:52","slug":"snow-rail-and-road-disruption-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/snow-rail-and-road-disruption-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow: Accidents Cause Rush Hour Misery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Road and rail users are being warned that heavy snow that is set to blanket Britain could chaos on transport networks in the coming hours.<\/p>\n

Temperatures are expected to remain below zero in most parts, making it bitterly cold, while blizzards and strong winds are set to make conditions treacherous on the roads.<\/p>\n

Rail operators South West Trains, Southern, Greater Anglia and Eurostar have already cancelled services or revised timetables to cope with any problems caused by the weather.<\/p>\n

Passengers were advised to check with operators before travelling.<\/p>\n

Airports and schools are likely to be closed as the snowfall sweeps into the country from the southwest through the day.<\/p>\n

A rare “red warning” has been issued for parts of South Wales, meaning all non-essential journeys should be avoided. The Met Office<\/strong> said up to 30cm of snow could fall in the area with strong southeasterly winds causing blizzards.<\/p>\n

Amber alerts were in place for parts of the Midlands, London and the South, the east of England, the North West and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

London and East Anglia could see up to 10cm of snow.<\/p>\n

The Highways Agency has issued an amber alert and has placed a 500-strong fleet of salt-spreaders, ploughs and snow-blowers on stand-by.<\/p>\n

Greg Carstensen, service director for Hounslow Highways, told Sky News they were well-prepared with roads in some areas already gritted the night before snow was expected.<\/p>\n

However, he still urged motorists to “listen to the advice being given out on television and radio and make sensible decisions and only make necessary trips if the snow is really that bad”.<\/p>\n

The AA said the greatest risk of disruption would be in Wales, the West Midlands, southern England and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Darron Burness, the AA’s head of special operations, said the morning commute was “likely to test man and machine with potentially challenging driving conditions across many areas”.<\/p>\n

“If the snow comes in quickly, it will cause problems, particularly drifting snow.”<\/p>\n

Those who decided to travel have been urged to travel prepared with a fully charged mobile phone, warm waterproof clothes, boots and a blanket, some food and drink, and have a torch, ice scraper, de-icer and a shovel.<\/p>\n

There were also reports of panic-buying in Derbyshire and Wales.<\/p>\n

At a supermarket in Ripley every loaf of bread and all the bananas had been bought up. One customer reportedly went home with 20 loaves of bread.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Road and rail users are being warned that heavy snow that is set to blanket Britain could chaos on transport networks in the coming hours.
\nTemperatures are expected to remain below zero in most parts, making it bitterly cold, while blizzards and stron…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}