Surprise snow? by Penny Tranter
April is renowned for producing changeable weather in the northern Hemisphere, as spring bridges the transition from winter to summer.
You may be surprised, but April is an unusual time to have heavy snow across the UK, but it made a recent appearance nevertheless. Heavy snow fell temporarily on Friday night and Saturday morning across the higher ground of northern England, amounting to 5 to 10cm in a few of the higher spots. It caused traffic chaos due to the poor travelling conditions and blocked roads, especially on some of the higher routes across the Pennines.
It is also rather unusual to have heavy snowfall across south eastern France at this time of the year, but that is what we had on Saturday. In the Isere, Ardeche and Drome regions more than 50,000 homes were left without power. The national power company EDF worked around the clock in the poor weather conditions to restore electricity as quickly as possible.
In the worst affected areas, more than 40cm of snow fell. Not surprisingly, it caused serious traffic disruption, particularly in the Ain region in the Jura mountain range, where a major highway was shut down completely. The TGV high speed rail link between Grenoble and Paris was also cut off by the snow.
In neighbouring Switzerland, train and road traffic were also disrupted by the heavy snowfall, with the worst of the delays affecting train services in the Jura mountain range.
At lower levels, the heavy snow turned into torrential rain resulting in rivers bursting their banks. This was particularly bad in south eastern Rhone-Alpes, southern Auvergne and Bourgogne regions, where a total of more than 200 people had to be evacuated from their homes.
Snow is still in the forecast over the next few days for many parts of the Alps, possibly bringing further traffic problems and power outages – watch this space! As for the UK there is no snow in the forecast for the foreseeable future – so we might now have to wait until next winter.
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