WINTRY CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5321, 6 February 1947, Page 5

WINTRY CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND

(Press Assn.—

BLIZZARD IN THE NORTH sn0wdrifts cause huge traffic' hold-up

-Rec. 9.30 p.m.)

LONDOjS", Feb. 5. Althougli Souther'n England is thawing" out after the recent big freeze, a fierce blizzard is raging in the north, where many 'villages are cut off by snowdrifts'10 to 12 feet deep after the worst night for 21 years. Because of snowdrifts about* 600 vehicles are invo.lved in an immense traffic block stretching several miles 011 the Great North Road between Grantham and Stamford. The police estimate that it will take two or three days to sort out the tangle. Passengers _ travelling- between Rochdale and Oldham were forced to spend the night in a train which ran into a deep snowdrif't. Three buses containing 78 women and children who left Hull for a pantomime in ^Leeds were stranded all night on their return in snowdrifts six to ten feet deep. Efforts were^still being made this afternoon to fred the buses. Communications are disorganised in the Derbyshire district and the Lincol'nshire Wolds, where villages are isolated. Householders have to dig through ^now to get out of their houses. It is still snowing bard. The southern thaw brought floodwaters waist deep on roads in the Saxmundham district of Suffolk. Snow Threatens City With Milk Shortage LONON, Feb. 5. Hundreds of men with two relief buses, 30 snow ploughs and six bulldozers dug tbrough the snowdrifts and. at nightfall reached the 78 stranded bus passengers waiting in " v. snow-isolated village hall in York, shire after spending last night in the buses. One woman pasenger is ill and another is expecting a baby. In another Yorksliire village the bus load of 28 women and four children, en route to the Leeds pantomime were still sheltering after villagers last night helped them, some fainting across fields from the snowlocked bus. Reports from the north tell of widespread road blockages and trains, including vital coal trains, being delayed by snowdrifts. The blizzard swept north-east Ycrlcshire, and as far south as Norfolk, and again isolated many villages which had been freed only a day or two ago. Almost the whole of the great milk producing area of Derbyshire is snowed up, threatening Sheffield, Nottingham and other large towns with a milk stoppage. At Lincoln a woman shopped on skis. The Daily Mail says the blizzard in the Midlands and the north is the worst for 50 years. Snow blanlcets 8000 square miles, with drifts 20 feet deep.