The Met Office has warned of a 60 per cent chance of disruption due to heavy snow across Cambridgeshire yesterday. The severe weather warning comes after Cambridge experienced its heaviest snowfalls in almost two decades this week, causing widespread disruption across the city and surrounding area.

With temperatures dropping significantly at the weekend, the snow began to fall lightly on Sunday afternoon. It continued with increasing heaviness through the night, and students emerging from clubs in the early hours of the morning were met with a town transformed, covered in a 5cm-thick blanket of snow. Another inch of snow fell on Cambridge early yesterday morning.
The Met Office says the last comparable snowy spell was in 1991.

At the University, many sports fixtures were called off and supervisions cancelled due to transport and childcare difficulties. Some debates, including one on the Israel-Palestine conflict, were also postponed due to flight problems. Most shops in Lion’s Yard closed early due to staffing difficulties.

The faculties, however, suffered remarkably few problems. “Everything was business as usual really,” said the secretary of the Biological Sciences school. “Some of the staff from smaller villages found it difficult to get into town, but everyone did eventually.”

Of the two teaching sessions that the Law faculty had to postpone, one was traffic-related and the other was caused by a back injury incurred while shovelling snow.

It was to the intense relief of eager students that very few lectures were called off. “Frankly,” commented one second-year NatSci, “I wouldn’t have known even if they were.”

The poor weather has had a significant impact on transport around the region, with major disruption to the London-Cambridge train route and Stansted Airport.

Police yesterday urged people not to travel on some of the region’s major roads unless “absolutely necessary” as plunging temperatures caused dangerous icy conditions and a series of traffic accidents.

For most of Monday the rail link between Cambridge and London was out of action, mostly due to signalling problems created by heavy snow and reduced visibility. Planes from Stansted were also grounded, but both are now operating on a normal service. The train service to King’s Cross was suspended again on Wednesday after a power line failure.

Cambridgeshire County Council is one of many local authorities across the country to be affected by a national shortage of grit. The council’s gritters, who have been dispatched more than 60 times this winter, have spread more than 11,000 tonnes of rocksalt across the county’s roads since October at a cost of more than £1.2m.

“These are record-breaking conditions this season and nationwide it has meant the suppliers for all councils cannot keep up with demand,” said Mark Kemp, the council’s director of highways.

More than 200 schools and colleges across the region were closed yesterday as authorities attempted to cope with the wintry conditions.

The snow has been caused by an area of high pressure, drawing in very cold continental air across the UK as it moved slowly westwards from southern Scandinavia out into the Atlantic Ocean. “The outlook remains rather wintry with further spells of rain, sleet and snow for parts of the UK on Friday and through the weekend,” according to the Met Office.

Additional reporting by Sufyan Khan.

By Beth Staton