More snow on the way

SUFFOLK woke to a dusting of snow today – with the threat that there's more to come over the next week.Although disruption was kept to a minimum today, the cold weather now seems set to remain until next weekend at least.

SUFFOLK woke to a dusting of snow today - with the threat that there's more to come over the next week.

Although disruption was kept to a minimum today, the cold weather now seems set to remain until next weekend at least.

And there's the prospect of frequent snow showers, which could hit any part of Suffolk at any time.

Motorists were warned today to take care on the roads as heavy snow affected

eastern parts of Britain.

Up to five centimetres of snow, together with hail and sleet, was forecast to fall on areas including eastern Scotland, the South East of England, the North York Moors, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

The snow showers were widespread on the east coast, spreading from

Northumberland to as far south as Kent, the PA WeatherCentre said.

The bad weather is likely to last through this week and into next, forecasters predicted.

Yesterday, severe blizzards on the east coast of the US affected hundreds of

British travellers as more than 35 flights to and from the UK were cancelled.

Flights in and out of London Heathrow and Manchester were hit as airports in

New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington DC and Philadelphia fell victim to the paralysing snowstorm as temperatures plunged to minus 15 degrees celsius.

But while the weather seems quite cold, Evening Star weatherman Ken Blowers said today that it's only January behaving true to form.

"So far this winter has been extremely mild. January has had temperatures above average almost every day, so what is happening now is normal service being resumed," he said.

"This weather is coming down from the north east, it's caused by an anticyclone to the north west of Britain sucking down air from the arctic."

However Mr Blowers said the bad weather in America had nothing to do with our cold spell.

"The two things are quite unrelated - we're getting our weather from Norway, not New York. It's just a coincidence this is happening at the same time."

Early warning of our cold snap over the weekend had allowed gritting lorries to get out early today to ensure roads remained open.

A county council spokesman said: "We had warnings of what was happening so we were able to get the teams out early and they are carrying on working throughout the day.

"The priority one and two roads were cleared before the rush-hour and then they started on the priority three routes. So far as we know there were no problems."

The cold snap was not severe enough to cause any schools in Suffolk to close today.