© PAShovelling snow while it's still snowing: Workers at Heathrow try to clear the snow after all flights at the airport were grounded over the weekend
- Up to eight more inches of snow to fall today
- Severe delays on London Underground during rush hour
- Man dies after falling through ice on fishing lake
- BA cancels 70 of 130 departures and 89 of 133 arrivals this morning
- Eurostar urging passengers not to travel unless absolutely necessary
- Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports open but expecting delays
- Furious AA said thousands of ungritted roads resemble 'ski jumps'
- Key train services suspended as workers try to shift snow from tracks
Much of the transport network is still paralysed - threatening to ruin the festive period for millions of families.
Temperatures plunged again overnight, with a UK low of -19.6c, recorded in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.
A record low for Northern Ireland was seen in Castlederg, County Tyrone, where the mercury plunged to -17.6c.
Severe weather warnings have today been issued for south west England and Wales, with the Met Office forecasting between two and four inches (5-10cm) of snow to fall in many places.
Up to eight inches (20cm) will land on high ground, with the snow due to reach London later this afternoon.
Freezing fog is also expected to hit areas of northern England.
Only about 20 flights were able to take off or land at Heathrow on Sunday out of 1,300 flights that usually go through the airport in a day.
The airport - Britain's busiest - has today been running a 'limited schedule of arrivals and departures' from 6am but disruption is expected for days to come.
© PAChurchill's statue in Parliament Square was covered in snow
A British Airways spokesman said he did not yet know how many flights would be leaving today.
'Most of our aircraft are still frozen,' he said. 'With incredibly low temperatures at Heathrow, it's difficult to get anything moving.'
Furious airline passengers have launched blistering attacks on beleaguered transport officials for effectively closing Heathrow airport, creating a backlog which could last until the next expected dumping of snow on Thursday.
Singer Lily Allen was among those caught up in delays at Heathrow, writing on Twitter before her flight left: 'Terminal 3 carnage. Apparently our flight is going today. Lots of tinfoil blankets all over the place. Departures is a ghost town.'
Mayor of London Boris Johnson has questioned Colin Matthews, the chief executive off Heathrow's owners BAA, over the situation at the airport, asking if everything possible had been done to get the airport moving.
He said: 'I stressed the huge economic importance of Heathrow. If there was a war on we'd surely be able to sort this out.
'I also expressed my hope that they would pull out all the stops to ensure that the planes get moving again.
'Most people realise that it has not snowed at Heathrow for some time so it is vital everything is done to get the aircraft and passengers moving again.'
Gatwick Airport - which is no longer owned by BAA - is open with operations 'returning to normal', but passengers have been warned to contact their airline before travelling as delays and cancellations are set to continue.
And there was anger felt by millions of motorists on gridlocked roads over claims councils were deliberately holding back grit to conserve supplies.
Police have launched a major incident in parts of Devon after blizzards and heavy snow hit the county overnight.
The main A38 and A380 roads which pass Haldon and Telegraph Hills are causing huge problems as lorries and cars have become stuck for hours in the snow.
Transport officials face tough questions over Britain's ability to cope with wintry conditions during one of the busiest times of the year.
It is the second time this month and the third this year that the country's transport systems have shuddered to a halt because of snow.
The turmoil emerged as:
- British Airways was criticised for cancelling all its flights from Heathrow as some rival airlines took off.
- With a stretch of the M25 closed in both directions for most of the day, the AA expressed fury at the lack of grit on 'key regional routes' and said thousands of roads resembled 'ski jumps'.
- Key train services were suspended as workers tried to shift snow from tracks
- More snow is expected to fall in several areas today, with forecasters predicting the temperature in England could reach a record low of -26.1C tomorrow
- Treacherous weather played a part in nine deaths over the past three days, including two 16-year-olds who died when the car they were travelling in hit a garden wall in Liverpool
- Health and safety legislation was used to postpone a host of sporting fixtures, closing parks where children play and stopping baggage handlers unloading planes at Heathrow
- Up to 14,000 extra delivery rounds were expected to be made by postal workers as the Royal Mail tries to clear the huge Christmas postbag
- While tens of thousands of travellers trying to leave Britain or get back to the country remain stranded in airports around the world, millions of workers face a struggle to reach their offices today.
A Eurostar spokesman urged passengers not to travel unless it was absolutely necessary, with refunds or rescheduled tickets available to those who could postpone their journey. Speed restrictions on Eurostar services are also adding up to two hours to journey times.
On the London Underground, there were severe delays this morning on the Metropolitan line which extends as far as Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire. There were minor delays on some other Tube lines.
Train operator East Coast has warned passengers there will be longer journey times and cancellations throughout the day. Yesterday all services were suspended between King's Cross, London, and Peterborough due to damage to overhead power lines.
© James EmmettHeathrow's Terminal 3 became a huge dormitory with passengers forced to sleep where they could find floor space
It emerged yesterday that British Airways called off hundreds of flights from Heathrow because it could not de-ice enough of its planes in time. While rival airlines continued to take off over the weekend, BA said it had cancelled flights from Friday onwards to give passengers 'certainty'.
However, insiders claimed the truth was that the airline had been caught short by the weather, with too few staff available to tackle its frozen airliners.
Sources suggested the company was paying the price of poor labour relations. Employees were 'getting their revenge' by doing the minimum necessary.
Thousands of passengers were left furious with one describing 'Third World' conditions at Heathrow's Terminal Five, from which all BA flights now depart.
The airport's management warned passengers to expect 'lots of knock-on disruption and delays' which will continue for days in the run-up to Christmas.
The backlog might not even be cleared before the next bout of snow, forecast for Thursday.
One senior aviation insider told the Daily Mail: 'BA's de-icing system went totally wrong on Friday. They didn't have crews in place.'
Airport officials confirmed that Heathrow is responsible for de-icing the runway and plane parking slots, known as stands. But it is down to each individual airline to de-ice its own planes.
British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh and BAA boss Colin Matthews were in constant touch throughout the saga, but British Airways declined to comment on allegations of heated rows between the two. A BA spokesman said: 'They speak all the time. Their conversations are confidential.'
On the roads, the AA accused councils of deliberately holding back grit to conserve supplies.
Its head of road policy, Paul Wattis, said: 'One of the problems is there is not enough grit being put on the major roads. Councils and the Highways Agency should be more concerned about road safety than conserving supplies.'
Meanwhile those who did not have to travel took advantage of the snowfall by heading to parks and commons with their sledges.
However, zealous officials tried to ruin the fun by closing some parks on the grounds of 'dangerous snow and ice'.
© AFP/Getty ImagesThe road to nowhere: Passengers wait for information after being forced to sleep in the airport overnight
'It is still going to stay extremely cold everywhere,' she said. 'Any snow that is around is unlikely to melt completely and in the second part of the week, we are likely to see more snow moving in from the North Sea.
'There is still going to be snow around on Christmas Day but it's still too early to say whether any will be falling.'
Snow falls this month are on course to be the heaviest for December in nearly 30 years. If the second half of the month is as cold as the first, this will be the coldest December on record since 1910.
The Heathrow refugee camp
They all should have been many miles away by now, enjoying the start of a relaxing seasonal break.
Travellers at Heathrow airport were instead condemned to spend hour after hour huddled in corridors - cold, hungry, thirsty, exhausted and fast losing patience with the lack of information about what (if anything) might happen and when.
Trapped in this departure-lounge limbo, many were, not surprisingly, fast losing their festive spirit.
As the information boards updated with the news that yet more flights were cancelled because of the snow yesterday, Terminal 3 resembled a shanty town with hundreds of stranded travellers hunkered down on whatever makeshift bed they could muster.
All around was a sea of silver foil, as if the leftovers of an enormous Christmas dinner had been parcelled up ready for the fridge. But these were weary men, women and children, wrapped in the emergency sheets handed out by airport staff.
'It's like a refugee camp,' said Chris Bivand, who with his wife Ruth spent Saturday night at Heathrow after their flight to Bangkok was cancelled that afternoon.
'We got here after the snow started to fall and they said that our flights would still go. Then we were told they were delayed and we would have to wait.
'Everyone started piling into the departures area and you couldn't move for ages. Eventually they brought security in to stop people entering as there were too many. We were the lucky ones as we found some seats, but towards the end of the evening they turned the heating off and everyone started getting very cold.
'There was a Dunkirk spirit and people were getting their clothes out of their suitcases to hand to strangers to keep warm. It was then that airport staff started to hand out the foil sheets.'
Yesterday the middle-aged couple, who run a bed-and-breakfast business near Leominster, Herefordshire, were still waiting - and hoping - for a flight.
Tom Lower, his wife Maria and their daughters Olivia, 12, and Abigail, ten, had to abandon their 'holiday of a lifetime' after their flight was cancelled. They were meant to fly on Saturday to Newark, New Jersey, where they would have joined a two-week cruise.
'It was bedlam here,' said Mr Lower, 42, from Taunton, Somerset. 'We waited seven hours here before they told us at 8.30pm our flight was cancelled. By then they'd checked in our luggage.
'All the hotels nearby were full so we ended up in one in Marlow 25 miles away at 11.45pm. We came back today to get our luggage, which has got all the Christmas presents in, and that's been a struggle in itself.'
PR executive Rosie Boyce, 26, who was heading for Vermont to spend Christmas with friends, was also waiting to get her luggage back yesterday.
'Our friends rang yesterday and said they'd taken off from New York in a blizzard and landed in Vermont in a blizzard,' she said. 'It hasn't snowed here since 2pm on Saturday, yet still here we all are - stuck.'
when last in our history was all travel in Europe completely halted.
the iceland volcanoes whose name i can never remember and now this.
and funnily enough , iceland which came out of the banking crisis intact is now having gloriously warm temps.
makes you think there is a god who has just been waiting for the last laugh.
be prepared. its going to rock.