Icy Grip Of Arctic Winter Tightens Across UK

There's no let up in the freezing conditions that have hit the country with temperatures down to -10C across southern England overnight. Skip related content
The heavy snow that has blanketed large parts of Scotland and Ireland is expected to sweep south and reach central England by morning, the Home Counties and the capital by lunchtime.
With up to 4ins of snow due to fall in parts of the country today, heavier deluges are predicted to hit many others later this week causing transport chaos on roads, trains and at airports.
The Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for the South East and warned of travel problems due to snow and sleet.
Isobel Lang, Sky News weather presenter said: "After a snowy weekend across the north, it now looks as though the greatest risk of disruption from snow will be further south across England and Wales.
"It's going to be very tricky to put detail on the worst of the snow or ice, but at this stage it looks as though Tuesday's snow could cause major problems across more central and later southern parts of England.
"This snow threat continues overnight and into Wednesday. After that the risk extends more widely again up the eastern side of Britain."
Stephen Davenport, senior meteorologist at MeteoGroup, said: "This is stretching the limits of short to medium term forecasting but so entrenched is this cold-weather pattern that it seems only a major upheaval in the atmosphere will bring a return to something milder.
"Should conditions continue in a similar vein then by March we might just be looking back at one of the coldest winters of the last 100 years."
On Monday the AA experienced its busiest ever day, with the organisation attending more than 25,000 breakdowns over the 24 hours.
The AA also warned that the roads were likely to be even busier today when worsening weather conditions combined with the return to school in many areas.
Grit stocks in England are holding up according to the Highways Agency, but Fife council in Scotland had to have several hundred tonnes of salt and grit delivered by the Scottish government after supplies ran low.
A Scottish Government spokesman said Fife Council received 250 tonnes of salt and grit yesterday following a delivery of 50 tonnes the day before.
Highland Council also said it had used 30,000 tonnes of salt over the past three weeks - more than the total it used during 2006/7.
Yesterday, over-running rail engineering works caused 60-minute rush-hour delays to trains in and out of London's Liverpool Street station.
And on London Underground there were part-suspensions on the District and Hammersmith and City lines due to signal failures.
Even the fountains in Trafalgar Square iced over in the sub-zero temperatures.
And National Grid bosses were forced to ask power suppliers to use less gas because of the freezing weather conditions pushing up demand by 30%.
It issued a gas balancing alert (GBA) on Monday, only the second time that the mechanism has been used.
GBAs are a way of warning customers to ease off on the fuel as well as encouraging suppliers to bring in more gas.