More snow on the way

It's now 2pm in London. The snow has been falling continuously for more than two hours now, with the heaviest falls still to come. The photo above shows the scene in our backyard shortly before the heavy falls began. At noon the Met Office confirmed that London was enduring its worst snowfall in 18 years.


The Met Office is also warning us to expect another four inches of snow between now and midnight. When we wake up tomorrow there will be almost a foot of snow on the ground. You can see the snow falling in the photo above that was taken from our living room window. The neighbours have built a cute snowman on their park bench.


News reports on the weather dominate the afternoon news headlines. Airports are badly hit. British Airways cancelled all flights out of Heathrow until 5pm, while EasyJet cancelled all flights from Luton Airport until 6pm. This morning Heathrow shut both runways, but not before the last plane to land slid off a taxiway. At last count more than 790 flights out of 1,350 daily flights from Heathrow are now cancelled.

Only two tube lines are currently operating without delay. Traffic is banked up for 52 miles on the M25 ring road following an earlier accident. Every school in the city is closed. The Mayor has kindly suspended the Congestion Charge in the centre of town; not that there are many cars venturing on to the road, or into the city.

It's incredible that London cannot cope with a decent snowfall unlike it's European neighbours. With four days to prepare you'd think we'd be in better shape today. Enough blogging until tonight. Lunch is over. Back to work.