STORMS AGAIN LASH ENGLAND

Chronicle (Levin), 7 March 1947, Page 5

STORMS AGAIN LASH ENGLAND

—Press Assoeiation

SOME DISTRICTS EXPERIENCE WORST BLIZZARDS LIVING 1EMORY

By Telcgraph-

Received. Friday, 11.30 a.m. LONDON, March 6. _ Britain's Arctic spell shows no sign of abating. The Air Ministry reports that the "villain of the peace" is once again the north-easterly blast from Russia, which has forced the long-awaited thaw away from England. blizzard swept the country last night and the worst ptor.rr-s in living memory cut off villages and hamlets in a belt i'roiU juth Wales to Bedfordshire. Fifty miles an hour storms blew down telegraph poles, piled up impassable snowdrifts and paralysed road traffic. Rescuers are fighting their way to isolated villages in the stormlashed Cotswolds where some areas are without any contact with the outside world. Heavy losses of cattle and sheep are feared. Farmers estimate a drop of more than 60 per cent. in lambing. An automobile official said it was almost impossible to travel from southern England to the North. Rain icing up roads and railways in London caused a transport chaos which experts describe as the worst for 30 years. A woman was found dead in a car covered with eight feet of snow near Aberystwyth. It snowed continuously for eighteen hours in the Welsh highlands where there are 9ft. clrifts on mountain roads. Snow half buried small cottages in isolated hamlets.

Gale warnings are operating over the whole area south of a line from the Humber to Anglesey, and over the West Channel. southern Irish Sea, Dover, Thames, Humber and Hegligoland. The thaw has arrived in Prance and has led to widespread flooding, which in .eastern France is the worst since 1910. Milk Supplies Seriously Cut Two of the principal milk distributing companies in the London area have decided to cut supplies twenty per cent. because of transport diffieulties. United Dairies, serving 3,000,000 London families, stated that it was doiibtful whetlier there would be any milk available tomorrow beyond Ihe requirements of priority consumers. The company" had received only half its normal supplies. The Royal Arscnal Co-operative Society, serving south-east London, will attempt to moct priority needs and cut non-priority consumers fifty per cent.

\ The blizzard piled up snowdrifts many feet deep and threw all kinds of transport into chaos. Trains have been lost in the drifts and lundreds of nassengers stranded in a white wilderness. None qf the night trains from Scotland and the north arrived in ' London this morning, and the railway companies could only report hat they were stuck in snowdrifts "somewhere." The Manchester-Saint Pancras express due at Luton at 9.57 • last night arrived this morning 15 hours late. , Twenty-three passengers aboard a train which left Breckton at 6.15 a.m. on Tuesrlav for Newport, are still stranded near Torpcntau. Railwaymen cilt a way through the drifts to take food, but the passengers will not leave in case they get lost in the. snow. Ajmost all movement of coal and food and other supplies is stopped. Many hundreds of Londoners have "■gain decided that it is hopeless to try to get to work. One hundredi villages are isolated.