Dense Fog Blankets Every English County

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 13

Dense Fog Blankets Every English County

LONDON, December 9. Shipping, aircraft and road traffic were held up last night by dense fog and icy patches which blanketed many parts of Britain.

On the Thames, five ships were involved in separate collisions in what a Gravesend tug office spokesman described as the “worst fog of the year in the lower region of the Thames." At London airport, fog caused cancellations, delays, and diversions. Jet airliners from New York and Johannesburg and planes from Nairobi and Beirut were diverted to Prestwick airport in Scotland, while 37 longdistance and continental services went to Gatwick, south of London.

Among the aircraft diverted to Gatwick was a Comet from Singapore carrying Sergeant Leonard Arrowsmith from Malaya to reach the bedside of his seriously ill three-year-old daughter at Hastings. The aircraft was delayed for five hours The fog meant a disappointment for four other children in Britain when a flight from Prague had to be cancelled. On board the plane should have been the children’s 72-year-old grandmother, Mrs Bani Andela Hanusova, of Zlin, Czechoslovakia, who was flying to see them tor the first time. The Royal Automobile Club reported from the north of Britain that a sudden drop in

temperature had “turned highways into skidways,” and icy conditions were reported from many other parts of the country. Many of the 150 villagers in the Nottinghamshire village of Cottam had to be evacuated during the night as floods continued to rise, cutting off the village. In some parts of the village the water was nine feet deep. The neighbouring villages of Littleborough and Coates were also cut off and people have been evacuated from flooded homes.

Not a county in England was fog-free this morning. “.It is lying like a vast patchwork quilt from the Scottish and Welsh borders right down to the south coast,” said an R.A.C. spokesman.

In Scotland, fog cleared rapidly during.the night, but snow fell in the Hebrides and sleet further south. London remained generally clear, but visibility in the home counties was restricted to as little as 10 yards in many places.

Opera: a play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.— Ambrose Bierce.