Heavy rain and snow threaten to disrupt post-Easter UK travel

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/01/heavy-rain-and-snow-threaten-to-disrupt-post-easter-uk-travel

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The threat of snow combined with roadworks, rail engineering works and strikes could cause misery for many returning home from the Easter holiday weekend.

Up to 60mm of rain may fall in parts of south-west England and southern Wales, and the Met Office has issued yellow weather warnings for snow in parts of northern England and southern and central Scotland as the band of wet weather hits colder air to the north.

The Met Office forecaster Helen Roberts said: “The main risk is rain. We have a number of warnings out at the moment, including a fairly large rain warning covering most of the country. It is going to cause problems for people travelling on Monday. There will be a lot of surface water on roads.”

“Further north there is a snow risk overnight on Sunday, with snow and sleet across the moors of England and hills and mountains of Wales.”

Although fears of a return of the “beast from the east” and predictions of a white Easter proved wide of the mark, the Met Office said snow could prove disruptive in some places on Easter Monday, causing some travel issues.

Southern England could see sleet showers but snow is unlikely to settle, and in Northern Ireland heavy rain is forecast, continuing into Tuesday.

Engineering works continue at Bristol Temple Meads station, which is not set to reopen until Wednesday after what Network Rail described as its largest resignalling project. Replacement buses were running on many popular holiday routes including to Weston-super-Mare.

There were reduced services at London’s Euston, Liverpool Street and Waterloo stations, and services at Manchester Victoria will resume on Monday.

South Western Railway was hit by another strike by the RMT union over the holiday weekend in a continuing dispute over staffing levels on trains, but it pledged to operate a full service.

The RAC predicted there would be about 1 million more leisure journeys by car over this Easter weekend compared with the same period last year.