Friday, 1 December 2017

Highways winter maintenance update for the next few days

Although the heavy snowfall and its impact on the roads in our area appear to be behind us for now, we thought it might be useful to publish the latest weather forecast and winter maintenance update from the council's highways services department:

After a busy day yesterday with continual winter maintenance action throughout the day in all domains following heavy snow the forecast has improved today and into tomorrow with only a slight threat of snow in the High Pennines but sub-zero temperatures across all domains.

Gritting activity in all domains completed this morning around 09:00 hours with the exception of the High Pennines where we had requirements to deploy the snow blower and had some final clearance works to do on some of the worst effected high routes

Please find below a summary of the attached winter maintenance planned action.  

Date 01.12.17pm

All High Pennines priority 1 routes
Standby 1600 hrs
All Low Pennines priority 1 routes
Standby 1600 hrs
All Central priority 1 routes
Standby 1600 hrs
All Coastal priority 1 routes
Standby 1600 hrs

Date 02.12.17am

All High Pennines priority 1 routes
Standby 0400 hrs
All Low Pennines priority 1 routes
Standby 0400 hrs
All Central priority 1 routes
Standby 0400 hrs
All Coastal priority 1 routes
Standby 0400 hrs

Today’s Forecast

Cold and windy today with sunny intervals and showers for a time, these wintry for a time in places. Cloudier later though with patchy light rain and perhaps a little sleet or wet snow on high ground.

Staying cloudy and damp this evening and for a time tonight with patchy light rain and a little upland sleet or wet snow. Drier later though with one or two clear spells. Not as cold as last night.

Tomorrow looks set to be mostly cloudy with the chance of a few spots of rain at first. However, a few bright or sunny interludes are possible too. Feeling less cold.

A chilly night - cloud amounts will be variable, and as such, confidence is low on the min RSTs and hazard risk as depicted in the tables.

Sunday is expected to be a dry day, perhaps with some bright spells. There may be the odd spot of drizzle or light rain on Sunday night, but this should have cleared by Monday, which will be a breezy but largely dry day. Monday night will be dry with clear periods, and the dry weather will continue into

Tuesday which will should have sunny intervals.

Wednesday is likely to be a mild and mostly dry day but with a chance of wetter and windier conditions spreading from the west later on. An unsettled spell of weather is then expected for a time around

Thursday next week with the potential for widespread rain and strong winds. It is then favoured to become chillier from the north-west for the end of next week as the rain clears eastwards. However, confidence in the forecast falls rather low by then.