TERRIFIC STORM

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 478, 11 March 1933, Page 7

TERRIFIC STORM

british isles swept GALE-DRIVEN SNOW MAKES MIDLAND ROADS IMPASSABLE. . HAVOC IN WALES. London, Saturday. i The British I'sleis were swept yesterday and last night hy the worst hlizzard experienced for fifty years. - Snowdrifts six to ten feet deep have made roads impassable In the Midlands and Peak districts, which are filled with stranded cars and motor'huses. • Two inches of snow fell in London this afternoon, making the streets slushy and treacherous for 'buses. Queen Mary, however, braved the elements to visit ia matinee in add of an hospital. Th'e steamer carrying the Scottish Rugby team to play against Ireland at Dublin arrived 15 hours Tate. In the meantime, so niuch snow l.ad fallen that the match was cancclled. Frozen to Death. A railwayman delivering parcels was frozen to death. Several trains have been completely "lost." Th'e Irish mail, due at Paddington ye'sterday morning, had not arrived last night and the .authorities were unabla to diseover its whereabouts owing to the hreakdown of telegraph and telephone wires. Finally, it was learned that the train had reached Cardiff 13 hours late, Almost everything is at a complete standstill in Wales. Roads- ara strewn with telephone wires and poles. Cottages are buried to the eaves, all eountry schools are closed, and scores of farms are isolated. Eighity children, members of a juvenile choir, became lost somewhere in. Pemhrokeshire. One coach with 40 children spent the night in a wayside police station, but the other was still missing at midnight. Two flying boats go.ing to Scotland were forced down in Carnarvon Bay and the crews- h'ad to wade ashore through water up to their neck. Buried in Snow. Snow fell continually for 36 hours in Yorkshire, and there, as well as in Scotland .and Wales, many hundreds of sbeep are missing in the snowdrifts, which, in some places are nearly 20 feet deep. A couple of Hiffstock (Shropshire) who went to nieet their child returning from school are both missing. In the same district the -police last night were digging out two cars wh'ose occupants are believed to have been buried in it. A 60-mile-.an-hour gale hlew the air liners to Croydon far ahead of schedule. All landed safely despite the f act that visibility was limited. to 250 yards owing to the whirling snow. Thousands of people wh'o, owing to the railway strike, wei"e m-otoring to Dublin for the international Rugby match found themselves stuck up hy snowdrifts. In Dublin itself, trams were stopP'ed and throughout the eountry telegraph and electric power wire's- are down, throwing many towns into darkness.