WORST STORM FOR FIFTY YEARS IN BRITAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, 7 March 1947, Page 5

WORST STORM FOR FIFTY YEARS IN BRITAIN

TRAFFIC CHAOS, AREAS ISOLATED HEAVY STOCK LOSSES

Keed. 8.10 p.m. London, March 6 Britain’s worst winter storm for more than 50 years has been raging. A hard blizzard swept the country last night and the worst storm in living memory cut off villages and hamlets in a belt from south Wales to Bedfordshire. More snow is expected and further dislocation seems, certain. Fifty miles an hour storms blew down telegraph poles and piled up impassable snowdrifts, paralysing road traffic. Rescuers arc lighting their way to isolated villages in the stormlashed Cotswolds, where some areas are without any contact with the outside world. *Gale warnings are operating over the whole area south of a line from Humber to Anglesey, and over the west channel and Southern Irish Sea, Dover, Thames, Humber and Heligoland. Chaotic,railway services are reported from all parts of the country. Ice-covered roads sent vehicles into skids, and in places halted cars, lorries and buses. Five hundred vehicles are stranded between Cheltenham and Burford, a distance ot about 20 miles, and 300 between Cheltenham and Cirencester, a distance of about 75 miles. Passengers in two trains cut off by snowdrifts in Wales are preparing to spend their second night on the railway. A third train trapped yesterday is not expected to be freed until to-day. It snowed continuously for 18 hours in the Welsh highlands, where there are nine-foot drifts on mountain roads. Snow half buried small cottages in isolated hamlets and .heavy losses of cattle and sheep are feared. Farmers estimate a drop of more than 60 per cent, in lambing. An automobile official said it is almost impossible to travel from southern England to the north. Rain icing up the roads and railways in London caused transport chaos which the experts describe as the worst lor 30 years.