Police Scotland is urging people to avoid travelling on the roads across an area affected by red and amber weather warnings.
The Met Office has issued a RED Warning, which is the highest category of alert, covering Glasgow, Edinburgh, much of the Lothians, the northeast Borders, as well as parts of Fife, Perth and Kinross, Forth Valley, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire.
People are being urged to avoid travel in the areas affected by red and amber warnings for snow.
The red warning is expected to last from 3pm on Wednesday through to 10am on Thursday morning, with amber warnings continuing across much of Scotland throughout this period and into Thursday.
You can see if the area you are in or wishing to travel to is affected by checking the Met Office website below:
www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings
A further meeting of the Scottish Government’s Resilience Room (SGoRR) has been held today, chaired by the Deputy First Minister and attended by Transport Minister Humza Yousaf, to ensure preparations are in place to deal with the forecast conditions.
The Scottish Government is in contact with local authorities to ensure they are fully informed to advise schools and services in their areas. People are also being urged to check with their transport providers for regular updates on journeys and potential cancellations.
The Met Office red warning states that the impacts could include long delays and cancellations on bus, rail and air travel. Roads may become blocked by deep snow, with many stranded vehicles and passengers.
Some rural communities might be cut off for several days. Long interruptions to power supplies and other services such as telephone and mobile phone networks, could occur.
Frequent and heavy snow showers are expected within these areas, and the police are advising people should avoid non-essential travel.
Employers are being asked to consider being as flexible as possible with their staff, and officials have been in contact with the haulage industry to make their members aware of the conditions.
Chief Superintendent Stewart Carle, head of Police Scotland’s Road Policing said: “Overnight and into this morning Police Scotland and other emergency services have dealt with literally hundreds of incidents on the roads across the country and continue to do so with a number of closures due to stranded HGVs and cars. There’s also been considerable disruption to other modes of transport including air and rail.
“The Met Office has now increased the weather warning to Red, the first time this has occurred for snow storms, and so we can’t stress enough that all travel should be avoided unless it’s essential being absolutely necessary and extremely important. Employers and public services need to carefully consider how that criteria meets their urgent business needs.
“The warning covers the commuter periods both this evening and tomorrow morning, and so we would ask people to think very carefully about making alternative arrangements for these times and to consider whether they really need to make that journey, particularly on the road network which may become overwhelmed as people leave work early to beat the storm.
“We’d urge employers to be as flexible as possible in terms of their staff perhaps not being able being able to come to their normal places of work and to consider alternatives.”As far as this afternoon is concerned, we’d ask people to think seriously about how they may be getting home either before or during the time of the Red warning as safely as possible.
“Police Scotland’s national Multi Agency Command Centre at Bilston, is co-ordinating our emergency response across all Local Policing Divisions in Scotland and will continue to do throughout the next 48 hours. Please help us by tuning in to broadcasts and heed the travel and other safety advice to stay safe during this period.”
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
