Bodmin snow

500 cars became trapped on the A30 at Bodmin Moor following a crash which involved several dozen cars.

Helicopters and 4-wheel vehicles took stranded motorists to stay in leisure centres overnight.

Teachers had to look after children after normal school hours after they became trapped in schools.

68 of Cornwall’s 273 primary and secondary schools were closed.

Fig 4 (left): United Kingdom
Fig 5 (above): Devon and Cornwall

Despite the terrible conditions, the only injuries to people involved a fire engine which came off the eastbound A30 road on the way to answer an emergency call. One fire-fighter was taken to hospital by helicopter with serious but not life-threatening injuries.

Disruption to transport

Railway services were affected. Fallen trees on one of the railway lines from London to Penzance caused trains to be delayed.

People stranded at home/on the road/at school

2,000 school pupils were stuck in schools and their teachers had to look after them. Parents complained that it was difficult to find out if their own children were safe and where they were. Some school children were forced to stay at homes of teachers and friends and in hotels.

A number of weather-sensitive outdoor events and some indoor events such as pony show-jumping competitions were cancelled on Saturday 26 November.

Financial effects on local economy

No exact figures are available for what the cost was, but it is likely that the cost of the snow-event ran into several hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds for Devon and Cornwall.

There was the cost of carrying out rescue operations and setting up of emergency shelters.

The impact of people not attending work and goods not being delivered to businesses in the south-west of England is likely to have added to the cost of the incident. 

Fig 8 (left): Difficult road conditions
Fig 9 (above): Snow-cleared roads

The blue arrows show the path the Arctic air has travelled to reach south-west England. Air is flowing anticlockwise around the area of low, so the wind direction over the south-west of England is a northerly.

The airmass type is Arctic Maritime. This is a cold airmass which often has periods of snow. The little cold front over south-west England, shown by a line with triangles, indicates where the snow is long-lasting and heaviest.

Figures 12 to 16 show visible satellite pictures from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday 25 November 2005. Alternatively, figure 11 shows an animation of the same images.

The brightest white areas show where the thickest cloud is and where snowfall is most likely to be falling. The thickest cloud occurs over Bodmin moor at around 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

The satellite is sensing how much sunlight is being reflected from the cloud. The darkening of the last image is about the time of sunset at 5 p.m. The dark areas of the picture over Exeter at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. show where the cloud has cleared.

Figures 18 to 25 show a sequence of radar imagery from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday 25 November 2005. Alternatively, figure 17 shows an animation of the same images.

The legend, or key, shows the water equivalent in millimetres (mm) per hour. 1 mm of water is about the same as a 10 mm deep snowfall.

The radar imagery suggests that the band of snow is moving westwards. It shows that it snowed for most of the day over Bodmin Moor before stopping around 6 p.m. It also suggests some high rates of snowfall at times, shown by the pink colours, e.g. 8.0-12.0 mm per hour. However, not all of this snow accumulates as it can take a while to settle on the ground. Also the radar does sometimes overestimate the rate of snowfall.

Figures 27 to 32 show air temperatures from 12 p.m. (midday) to 5 p.m. on Friday 25 November 2005. Alternatively, figure 26 shows an animation of the same images.

The temperatures of less than 1 °C (shown as yellow and blue) indicate where it is cold enough for the precipitation to most likely fall as snow.

The temperature remained below 1 °C for the whole of this period on Bodmin Moor and over much of the surrounding area. When the precipitation occurred, it did fall as snow and, because the roads were so cold, it was easy for it to settle on the A30 road surface.

Figure 33 shows a map of snow depths from weather stations taken at 9 a.m. on Saturday 26 November 2005.

Snow depths tend to only be measured once per day at 9 a.m. It is likely that, at the height of the event, snow depths were greater, but that this may have melted overnight. There may also be other locations, where there are no weather stations, which had greater depths of snow.