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A major incident was declared over the weekend due to extreme weather.
Road conditions remain challenging, and temperatures remain very cold. The latest updates on the current situation are below.
While the yellow weather warning for our area passed at noon on Monday, road users are still being advised to take sensible precuations.
Please be aware of black ice on many of the county's roads and ensure you drive to the road and weather conditions.
- Allow extra time for journeys
- Be prepared
- Drive to arrive
The Met Office is also warning of temperatures falling below freezing Tuesday evening overnight into Wednesday.
If you have to travel, you can check out the road conditions before you set off on the W&F weather cameras. You can also check out our snow and ice gritting map to find out exactly where we're covering.
Due to the difficult weather conditions, many schools have reported that they’re closed. Any notices of closure for Tuesday will be added to the Westmorland and Furness Council website.
For the latest school closures, visit the council website.
Approximately 800 homes remain without power in affected areas and Electricity North West are working to restore power as soon as possible. An update is available on their website.
If you lose power or require additional support during a power outage:
The Extra Care register is the new name for the priority services register, so if you've already signed up, don’t worry, you don’t need to do anything extra.
Our highways teams have been working continuously through the weekend dealing with heavy snow fall and ice.
This has been hugely challenging for the highways teams due to the conditions and heavy snow, as well as the many abandoned cars that have affected our ability to access all of the network.
Highways teams are also helping with the wider emergency response being co-ordinated by the multi-agency group led by the police, in terms of accessing those snowed in and required to bed down in the emergency centres and also helping utility companies to gain access to electric and water infrastructure for repairs after some residents had services disrupted.
 By yesterday (Sunday) evening the area’s main priority routes were all deemed to be passable with care and our gritting teams are still out covering all priority 1 and 2 routes.
Further freezing temperatures overnight mean conditions on the highways network are still difficult, especially on rural roads, many of which are still only passable with extreme care.
All our highways teams are still out and are now trying to access the wider road network. Abandoned cars are still causing issues blocking access to some routes for agencies and gritters and snowploughs.
Anyone who had to leave a vehicle at the weekend and who can safely do so is now asked to please move it if it is causing an obstruction, which will help our crews get through to clear more roads.
All priority routes were treated prior to the snow event on Saturday and when it became apparent the snowfall was significantly heavier than forecast and the weather warning was escalated by the Met Office to Amber on Saturday afternoon, teams were mobilised and reacted immediately to the incident.
Heavy snowfall in a sustained period caused significant disruption to the road network and highways bought in additional capability during the afternoon and the operation continued right through the night and continued all through Sunday and Sunday night.
52 members of staff and supporting partners and contractors helped within this initial effort and all available gritters and snow ploughs were deployed on the priority road network.
Highways continued to increase resources and a further six heavy duty tractors, with ploughs, were deployed to some of the more difficult parts of the road network and we utilised our supply chain to provide six additional JCBs to accompany our gritters, to prevent losing these vital resources in areas with deep snow.
In total 34 vehicles were involved in the response, including 20 gritters.
The decision has been taken to suspend today’s (4 December) waste and recycling collections in the South Lakeland area only due to the ongoing major weather incident.
Areas of South Lakeland, particularly around Ulverston and the rural south Lakes communities, were among those most seriously affected by the weekend’s heavy snowfalls.
A yellow warning for ice is in place across the whole area and many side roads are still covered in snow, with a number of abandoned vehicles from the weekend restricting access.
Household Waste Recycling Centres in Ulverston, Kendal and Ambleside are also temporarily closed today.
Please note that this suspension of today’s collections only affects rounds in the South Lakeland area of Westmorland and Furness. Services in the Barrow and Eden areas will be deployed as normal, although some rounds in these areas may still be subject to some disruption due to the snow and ice.
If your collection is missed, please leave your waste/recycling containers out and crews will attempt to return when it is safe to do so.
In South Lakeland, the service is looking to redeploy staff over the rest of the week to collect today’s missed collections, prioritising the general waste and recycling.
For the latest information on weather warnings, please visit: UK weather warnings (metoffice.gov.uk).
For information on priority gritting routes in Westmorland and Furness visit: Priority gritting routes | Westmorland and Furness Council
For information on priority gritting routes in Cumberland visit: Priority gritting routes | Cumberland Council
For the latest information on power outages, please visit: Fault list (enwl.co.uk)
For the latest information on water outages, please visit: Up my street | United Utilities
We have recently launched our Winter Ready Campaign which offers additional advice and support on how to prepare for the approaching winter months.
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