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THE TIMES

Big freeze prompts gas fears, delays and closures

The threat of gas shortages has forced the National Grid to issue an alert to power suppliers for the second time in its history as the Arctic cold snap extended its grip across Britain, causing travel misery.

Hundreds of schools were forced to close, airports cancelled flights and forecasters predicted heavy snowfalls over all areas of the UK – with no prospect of a thaw in sight.

Manchester Airport was due to remain closed until noon due to heavy snow, while delays and cancellations have hit flights from Gatwick, Leeds and Liverpool airports in England.

Ten East Coast Main Line rail services between London and Leeds were among the train journeys which had to be axed. On the roads, heavy snow caused a section of the A66 to be shut in both directions in Cumbria and a succession of accidents added to drivers’ difficulties on many routes.

The prolonged freezing spell has been caused by a dramatic shift in the weather pattern this winter. Britain’s prevailing wind generally brings weather from the west, but for the last few weeks the wind has blown from the north and east. This has led to snowy conditions and sub-zero temperatures arriving from the Arctic, Scandinavia and Siberia. The conditions are predicted to continue for at least a week.

Brendan Jones, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, said: “It has been one of the lengthiest cold spells we’ve had for quite a while - since 1995-96.

It’s purely because of the wind direction across the UK. Our source of warmer and milder weather has been completely cut off.”

MeteoGroup issued a dire forecast for the next few days: “Heavy snow showers or more widespread snow will continue to move across northern and eastern areas of Britain, bringing further accumulations of several centimetres in places and causing notable disruptions to transportation.

And the highly populated south is likely to see snow that will at times be widespread, persistent and severe enough to bring significant or even major difficulties to infrastructures, particularly transport.”

Between 2in-4in (5cm-10cm) of snow is forecast to be lying on the ground over “wide areas” by Friday at the latest.

Temperatures will stay below freezing at night for the next week, with daytime temperatures struggling to get above freezing across most of the Britain.

In North Yorkshire, around 60 schools were shut this morning, in Leeds 11 schools closed their doors and all schools in Aberdeenshire, Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders were also shut.

The National Grid issued a gas balancing alert (GBA) yesterday afternoon, only the second time that the mechanism has been used.

A spokesman said the alert had already proved effective and bosses were meeting again today to decide whether to issue a further GBA after the current warning expires.

GBAs are a way of warning major customers to ease off on the fuel as well as encouraging suppliers to bring in more gas.

A spokesman said that some power suppliers had stopped using gas yesterday afternoon which eased the pressure.

He added: “The big generators like E.ON have gas-fired power stations and coal-fired power stations. They can choose to switch from gas to coal.

We thought there was going to be a certain amount of gas going into the country and then a few suppliers, their supplies dropped off.

They weren’t going to be able to provide the amount that we thought, so we issued a GBA so hopefully that’s going to bring it back to where it should be.”

The first time a GBA was used was in March 2006