Warrington's great white-out

IT’S Day 2 of the great Warrington “white-out” – and although overnight temperatures plunged well below freezing point the town’s buses are back on the road and Golden Square is openf or business.
But ALL schools in the borough will remain closed today.Yesterday, a small number of primary schools managed to stay open but all high schools and special schools were closed.
Warrington’s bus service is operating, although slower than normal. Operations Director Charlie Shannon said: “The current situation is that all buses are out on the road this morning – progress is slower than usual and although temperatures are expected to remain close to freezing, snow is not forecast here for today.
We are unable to serve certain roads around the town but the vast majority of the network is being covered.”
Services more or less ground to a standstill yesterday as the snow continued to fall heavily throughout most of the day.
There were numerous minor road crashes, although none considered “serious” by the police.
Fire crews from Birchwood had to deal with a stranded lorry on the M62.
Warrington Borough Council insisted that gritters and snowploughs were about throughout the night, despite claims that many major roads had not been treated yesterday.
A council spokesman said the council had enough grit to last for several days and that more was on order.
Non-urgent hospital appointments have been cancelled and NHS Warrington says although district nurses and health visitors will do their best to reach seriously ill and housebound people, less serious cases should expect to have to wait.
Police say Warrington appears to have been hit more severely by the weather than other parts of Cheshire, although Macclesfield has also been badly affected. By general consent, it was the heaviest snowfall the town had seen for at least 30 years.
Some roads, such as the steeply sloping Rectory Lane at Lymm, were closed completely throughout the day.
But it’s an ill-snowstorm which benefits no-one. Hundreds of school children made the most of their unexpected day off to enjoy sledging and snowballing.
Many people have emailed photographs of snow scenes to warrington-worldwide and a selection can be seen by CLICKING HERE.
Police issued a warning about a minority of youngsters who were causing problems by snowballing elderly people’s homes, etc.
A spokeswoman said: “We would urge parents to ensure they know where there children are and what they are doing.
“There is some anti-social behaviour going on amongst some youngsters and this can be very disturbing for elderly and isolated people.”

A snow blizzard on the Bridgewater Canal at Lymm – Picture Gavin Laidlaw.

Snow on the Bridgewater Canal at Grappenhall – Picture John Hopkins.

Top picture shows the Bridgewater Canal at Grappenhall taken by John Hopkins.

Other pictures show a festive snowman at Appleton pictured by Editor Gary Skentelbery and also pictured is a delightful “Snow Bear” created at Spud Wood, Lymm and emailed in by Charlotte Burton.

But it wasn’t all fun in the snow as this “clearing the way” picture emailed in by John Hopkins shows as a van driver is stranded on the Cantilever Bridge.