Cold snap brings end to British summer time

A cold snap has hit the UK, marking an emphatic end to British summer time (BST), with snow and ice covering parts of the country yesterday.Gritters were sent out in parts of the country on Friday night for their first run of the season and the Met Office issued yellow warnings for snow and ice in northern Scotland and ice in Northern Ireland.Forecasters warned of patchy ice and slush affecting some upland routes as well as rail and road disruption.Snow may dust the tops of hills in the Pennines in northern England, Snowdonia in northwest Wales, the North York Moors, and across the Scottish Highlands.Eastern parts are likely to be hit with hail, showers and strong winds throughout the day, with the chance of a thunderstorm.And even in southern parts, where temperatures are forecast to be about 7° Celsius (45° Fahrenheit), wind chill means it will feel several degrees cooler, forecasters said.Bonnie Diamond, a Met Office forecaster, said: “We have had a pretty mild October so far and a warm start to autumn in places, so it will be a big change for everybody as we go through the weekend. Certainly it’s time to get the warm winter clothes out.”However, the colder mornings will at least be brighter.The clocks return to Greenwich mean time (GMT) at 2am this morning, making sunrise an hour earlier.It comes as the practice of daylight saving time comes under threat across Europe, with scientists and politicians becoming increasingly concerned about the impact it has on the human sleep cycle.While the autumn change is tolerated well by most, the spring switch to daylight saving time has been found to cause symptoms similar to jet lag in some people.Last year, the European parliament voted to reconsider daylight saving time, after a German investigation in 2016 determined that “the process of adaptation to the time change might be more difficult for some people than has been assumed in earlier years”.The report called for further research, but before that happened Lithuania asked the European commission to act.A public consultation found 80% of people were in favour of abolishing the clock changes, and the European commission has since recommend ed member states should do so.In many European countries, daylight saving time was introduced after the 1973 oil crisis.In Britain it dates back to the 1916 Summer Time Act.