BBC

UPDATE: 02/07/09 Snow conditions continuing in UK with more to come.
UPDATE: 02/06/09: Snow reached all the way down to Morocco in North Africa where six brothers and sisters have died when their house fell down following heavy snowfalls, state media says.

In the UK, drivers had to contend with heavy snowfall on their way to work. Heavy snow has brought a fifth day of chaos to the UK, with severe weather warnings issued to much of the country. Road, rail and air transport is again badly affected, while hundreds of schools have again been closed. See video of the chaos from the BBC here. And this video of many drivers abandoning their cars on the side of the road near Exeter, as the weather worsened on Thursday night.

The West Country and south Wales were worst-hit, with Okehampton in west Devon seeing 22in (55cm) of snow. The Severn Crossings have been closed after ice began falling onto cars and smashing windscreens, while about 200 people were rescued from cars in Devon.

Five windscreens were smashed on the second Severn Crossing - the M4 - on Friday morning, the Highways Agency said. Jim Clune, general manager of Severn River Crossing PLC, said sheets of ice measuring up to a square metre had fallen from overhead sign gantries. 

Drifting snow could make the roads more difficult to clear in parts of the West Country. “It’s very much a safety hazard and, of course, these gantries span all carriageways on the motorways.” Heavy snow, some of it a foot (30cm) deep, has cut off some villages in Devon and Somerset and snow is still falling.

The bad weather left 21,000 homes across the West Country without power on Friday. Western Power Distribution (WPD) said 12,000 residents in Devon were without electricity. Another 8,000 homes in the Taunton area were also without power. “We have everyone available working on this. We hope to restore power to as many people as we can today,” a WPD spokeswoman said.

Thousands of callouts

A young couple are recovering after being stuck for 12 hours in an upturned car which was stuck in a ditch near Camelford in Cornwall. Police spent six hours searching for the pair, aided by a Royal Navy helicopter and Cornwall Search and Rescue volunteers. The AA had received more than 3,000 callouts by 0930 GMT on Friday, double its normal workload, and it warned that shortages of road salt had created a “road safety crisis”. Emergency services had spent Thursday night rescuing stranded motorists from the A38 at Haldon Hill, near Exeter, after the weather deteriorated suddenly. A few miles west, the Army was called in to pick up about 60 people stuck on the A386. Many drivers spent the night in emergency centres.

The Met Office warned that heavy snow was likely on high ground in Bath, Bristol, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Plymouth, Swindon, Torbay and Wiltshire. Read more here. See UK alarmist, I mean stoat go bezerk with snow here.