Snowfall made driving conditions treacherous in many parts of the country, disrupted rail and air transport networks and forced hundreds of schools to close. More snow is forecast for the rest of the week.
“Sadly three people have lost their lives yesterday and several people have faced the shock of witnessing or coming across the scene,” said Lincolnshire police sergeant Helen Alcock yesterday, referring to the first of the two fatal collisions.
Police appealed for witnesses to the incident, which involved a blue Renault Clio and a white Scania lorry on the A15 shortly after 6am, to come forward.
The crash was one of 20 within three hours on Lincolnshire’s roads, including one involving a school bus with 45 pupils on board, police said. The children were unharmed after their vehicle collided with a car and veered off the road near Deeping St James.
Officers in Cambridgeshire said another man had died in a crash involving three vehicles on the A47 near Peterborough shortly before 10am.
Essex police said one person was injured in a 17-car pile-up on the A120 between Colchester and Elmstead Market.
Yellow warnings of snow remained in place in the UK, the Met Office said, and more were issued for later in the week covering parts of Scotland, northern England, south-west England and Wales.
The Met Office said several centimetres of snow fell in some parts of the country on Monday night and into yesterday morning, including Newcastle and Northumberland. The lowest overnight temperature of -8.9C was recorded in Farnborough, Hampshire.
Trains were affected by the snowfall, with cancellations and disruptions on lines across the country. Southeastern, which operates in Kent, cancelled dozens of services, including several to London’s St Pancras, Victoria and Cannon Street stations. Southern and Great Northern services were also affected.
Network Rail has lifted all restrictions on routes served by Greater Anglia after “heavy snow fall hit further south-east than predicted”. Meliha Duymaz, the route managing director for Network Rail Anglia, said: “I’d like to apologise to passengers who have had difficult journeys this morning and thank them for their patience.”
British Airways cancelled dozens of flights from Heathrow airport, and easyJet said it expected its flights to be disrupted. The snow also forced hundreds of schools to close across the country.
The Met Office forecaster Frank Saunders said parts of the country could have their coldest spell of weather since at least 2013, and possibly since 1991. It was expected temperatures could reach as low as -15C by midweek where there is snow on the ground, close to those forecast for parts of northern Norway and Iceland.
Forecasters predicted that another weather system, Storm Emma, would bring blizzards, gales and sleet later in the week as it met the chilly “beast from the east”.