Winter's icy blast hits the vegetable trade. The South's market gardeners face a bleak prospect.
It could mean shortages and even higher prices.
Hello, good evening. The snow gets worse in the West, but it's not so bad in the East.
Tonight we look at how to drive in the icy conditions and indeed how not to.
And it has to be better by rail. 130 million pounds better as British Rail unveil a new age of the train on the Brighton Line.
And our snow desk will be bringing you a full roundup of the latest effects of the weather, what's on this weekend and what's off.
And we start tonight with the havoc the snow and frost is bringing to vegetable producers in the South.
Many market gardeners face severe financial losses. Crops have been ruined and spring planting is being delayed.
This could lead to a shortage of vegetables in the shops and of course a hefty increase in prices.
Charles Waist reports on that now.
Today's heavy snowfalls couldn't have come at a worse time for market gardeners whose crops have already been severely damaged by the recent overnight frosts.
The owners of the Cloverville nursery near Wickham in Hampshire are facing losses of thousands of pounds.
Not only has the snow covered fruit and vegetables, but it's blocked roads leading to the nursery,
making it impossible for any remaining healthy vegetables to be taken by lorry to market.
Much of the produce here though is destined to go nowhere. This field of cabbages are impossible to economically pick.
The frost has also made many of them inedible.
Leaks which should now be on their way to market are also buried beneath snow. More than half are thought to already be ruined.
The nursery says the weather's led to losses of up to 400 pounds a week and that's only the beginning.
Thousands of lettuces have been frost damaged. The continuing cold weather has also ensured that ground which should now be ready for planting
is frozen solid inside the greenhouse.
There's no space for the thousands of young lettuces, still under propagation and due in the shops later this year.
The nursery says it's impossible for them to insure against the cold weather. The premiums are just too high.
Well it's so serious that as you can see we cannot find our crops.
They're absolutely frozen into the ground and it's impossible to do anything on the land today.
What effects is that going to have on your business?
Well it's meant that everything's come to a standstill. We've got nothing going out today and we're not going to try and do anything today.
What effect do you think all this is going to have on prices in the shops and the supply of goods generally?
Well we're gradually seeing a shortage of vegetables, home produced vegetables.
This is going to get worse and worse obviously.
Particularly as the roads get snowed up and they can't be brought in from other areas.
Do you think you'll be able to stay in business?
I'm sure we've seen worse times and we'll live to see the better ones.
Well this is pretty bad isn't it?
Probably as bad as it's going to get.
The snow will bring the South's growers even more problems in the coming months.
When they finally do get their remaining fresh vegetables onto the shop shelves, they fear they could be competing with cheap foreign imports,
which will further cut their market share in the years ahead.
But of course it's not just the South's market gardeners who have been hit by the weather.
Schools, businesses and public transport throughout the region have also been affected.
John Andrews has the details now.
Well the snow held up emergency services as they were on their way to rescue an elderly woman in a burning house at Downton near Salisbury.
By the time they arrived the woman, who was 82, was already dead.
It's thought she fell onto an open fire.
At Woodley near Reading a woman fell down an embankment and lay seriously injured with a broken hip in the snow.
Until she was spotted by a passerby walking a dog.
The woman Mrs Doris Sharp is undergoing surgery in hospital at Reading.
A school bus and a gas van crashed in the icy conditions at Fairham this morning.
The children weren't injured but they were getting very cold until the police stepped in with their own minibus to take the youngsters on to school.
A hundred schools in Dorset have been closed today because of the conditions
and a special snow desk set up by Salisbury police had 700 calls this morning.
Several villages on Salisbury Plain have been cut off during the day
and even some major roads in Dorset and Wiltshire were closed for quite a while although most are now open again.
Gatwick Airport stayed open but the regional airports at Bournemouth, Herne Airport and Eastleigh Airport near Southampton, they were both closed.
The buses too have been having a hard time. Many services have been withdrawn because of blocked roads.
But British Rail say they've been maintaining an almost full service despite the extra difficulties they faced as a result of yesterday's strike.
But let's pay tribute to the men who've been working around the clock to keep us moving.
Especially the driver of a gritting lorry at New Milton in the New Forest whose truck slid off the road
and straight into a car showroom causing several thousand pounds of damage to two cars.
Well we'll be looking at some of the other casualties of the snow later.
We've details of some of the events that have had to be called off because of the bad weather.
Well British Rail are getting there, also they promised us, and today they unveiled the final stage of plans to improve the Brighton line.
More than a hundred million pounds has apparently been spent cutting the journey time to London and modernising that section of the southern region.
Part of the package is a complete facelift for Brighton Station as Andy Webb reports now.
The whole 130 million pound project is known as Operation New Look.
British Rail admit that some of the equipment they're now using will be more at home in a railway museum.
Much of it is more than 50 years old.
Before long Brighton's ancient signalling system will be replaced by a computer based at Crawley.
Already much of the track has been renewed.
The next few months engineers will straighten out many of the curves on the Brighton approach.
Another target for modernisation is the massive New England viaduct.
140 years old it carries traffic over the A27 in the town centre.
The work will mean that the road's completely closed for four days over Easter.
Well ironically it was exactly this stretch of road that was closed for half a day this week after an accident in the snow.
Then there were traffic jams stretching way back up the Shoreham Road.
Though British Rail say that they've chosen the four days over the Easter weekend, Good Friday to Easter Monday.
Specifically to avoid those kind of delays when they start work.
While work on the track is completed all trains to and from London will have to go via Hove throughout the month of April.
Adding ten minutes to the journey time.
But after April British Rail say trains will travel to Victoria in 52 minutes.
A six minute saving on the normal time.
But surely a costly one.
It's not just that, we're basically rebuilding a railway, much of which is 50 years old.
The signalling in the Brighton area is 50 years old.
And we certainly expect to get a lot of extra business over the years from the modernisation.
And coupled with the track and re-signalling work we're modernising the station itself.
And we're making a start on modernising the trains too.
So is Brighton Station then going to look much different after all this?
Brighton Station will have a new attractive terrazzo tiled concourse.
It will have a new indicator system of the electronic type that's used at London Termini.
Replacing the old indicator.
And it will have a new barrier line.
And so soon it will be all change at Brighton Station.
The one piece of historic equipment with a future is the old indicator board.
Due for a trip itself to the National Railway Museum in York.
Thousands of people are suffering the misery of going without water in this cold weather.
In Sussex, repair teams are working round the clock to fix burst water mains.
The Southern Water Authority in Brighton is dealing with 15 emergency calls a day.
Compared with the usual one or two. Tim Hurst reports.
Most water mains are laid beneath roads.
So any escaping water in these temperatures immediately freezes and puts a layer of sheet ice across the road.
The repair teams can often only guess about exactly where to dig their holes.
The mains are four feet underground.
And thousands of gallons of escaping water may seep some distance before rising to the surface.
We're probably having about 10 to 12 burst mains a day in the area.
What's causing them?
Well it's the bad weather. The temperatures are going well below freezing.
The pipes are contracting. The ground's moving and it's just snapping the mains.
But why at this particular time? I mean the thaw hasn't even started yet.
No it hasn't but this is an exceptional winter. It's probably our worst winter for 22 years since the 1962-63 winter.
Are you managing to cope with all the calls as you get them?
We're coping at the moment.
What do you think is going to be the worst period? When the thaw starts?
I think possibly it may well be that.
So what's your advice if you have any?
Well there's nothing the general public can do with regards to burst water mains but their own particular plumbing,
I would hope that now that they will go and lag all their pipes if it's not too late.
All emergency calls from the Brighton area are handled in the huge southern water control room at Falmer,
from where the repair teams are directed by radio.
The Ridge boarding team. Your name and address sir?
It does seem strange that yesterday it was monitored.
You're trying to burst the main, it's clean water.
Spotting trouble before it happens should be easier now with a new weather radar,
which can pinpoint approaching winter weather before it happens.
It should also help in milder weather when it's warm enough to rain.
Then the water engineers can use it to predict floods.
Well I dare one say it but the people in London seem in their usual metropolitan way to think that
because it didn't snow very much in London it didn't snow anywhere at all.
That's what they were saying on the 6 o'clock news isn't it?
You were a darn sight more accurate than most other people forecasting last night weren't you?
Yes I'd like to think we were Debbie. We weren't perhaps quite right for Sussex.
There was really not a great deal of snow there today.
Perhaps unusually the Isle of Wight was the worst hit place in our region.
Not only in our region it was the worst hit place really in the country in the last 12 hours or so.
There was quite a lot of snow down there and out towards Dorset as well.
I think possibly you're seeing the last of that now and perhaps we're going to have 24, 36 hours of slightly better weather.
This afternoon's satellite picture shows all the cloud that produced that snow during today
being pushed along by this low pressure near Biscay there.
The cloud is tending to swing westward here taking its snow with it and somewhat clearer weather coming in
so not that clear really and we haven't quite seen the last of the snow yet.
There's still some lingering around the Dorset, Weymouth, Portland area
but that is now drifting away from Dorset and then we'll have a dry night
but a very misty one you'll find if you're driving around.
A cold one, not quite as cold as it's been just lately but nevertheless temperatures which are now around freezing point are dropping further
so there'll be a widespread frost again but as I say a fairly dry night once this last bit of snow's cleared away from Dorset
and a dry day tomorrow, a brighter day that doesn't say there'll be much sunshine around I fancy
but nevertheless the sky will look brighter and it's going to be a dry day as well.
Temperatures zooming up to around 2 degrees Centigrade, I say that because that's a good deal higher than they've been for some time in the past
and furthermore only very light winds with very variable directions so that will help it make it feel a little warmer.
Later in the day some southeasterlies picking up on the Dorset coast.
Strange as the temperatures shot up to zero today, it felt quite warm actually.
Indeed while the snow may be easing off it'll be too late though to save the majority of sporting events which should have taken place this weekend.
Here's John Andrews again with the latest on the list of cancellations.
As far as the football program is concerned there's hardly a match being played at any level in the south this weekend.
Southampton decided after yesterday's snowfall that their game at the Dell couldn't go on
and today's blizzards made conditions at the ground even worse.
And while Sussex has escaped the worst of today's snow, the state of Brighton's Goldstone ground hasn't improved enough to allow their match against Carlisle to go on.
Aldershot's home game against Halifax has also been cancelled.
But for teams playing away it's a brighter picture.
The games between Middlesbrough and Portsmouth, Doncaster and Reading and Rotherham against Bournemouth are still on.
But soccer cancellations are just the tip of a very large iceberg.
BMX riders belonging to the Pool Panthers, the Farnham District and the Gosport clubs won't be pedalling this weekend.
And two show jumping events have been cancelled. They're at Stocklands Show Centre in Lippoek and Burleigh Villa Arena at New Milton.
Obviously the cold weather means many elderly folk are sensibly staying at home.
So tomorrow's whist drive at the Avenue Church in Southampton and the Lions Club meeting at Ventnor are both off.
Southampton's opportunity group for the disabled has cancelled tomorrow's Skittles evening.
And the next Handy Club meeting for the disabled in Swanage is off too.
A spare a thought for 15 disappointed youngsters from Southampton who will be staying in the warm this weekend.
Their junior chamber survival course has been called off because in all this snow they just might not survive.
Meanwhile do bear in mind that Radio Solent will be broadcasting a special snow programme at 10 past 7 this evening.
While Radio Sussex is manning a special phone line tomorrow to help bring you the very latest weather news.
Thanks John. Now if you have to go out in a car in this weather it's best to know what you may be in for.
Richard Vaughan has been picking up a few tips from the experts on just how to cope.
What you're about to see is how not to drive on snow and ice.
The man who's demonstrating is Ian Taylor, racing driver and instructor at Thruxton.
As I come down here I'm beginning to brake and if you just brake without coming off the pedal at all
the wheels will just lock up and the car will just go in a straight line.
At the same time either the back end or the front end could break away.
If that happens to you it's so important again to come off the pedal.
And unfortunately most people in a panic situation just tend to keep their foot heavily on the brake
and the car will just go in a straight line and unfortunately that's when they tend to hit things.
Just look at the difference in stopping distances between the white police car where the driver pumps on and off the brakes
and the blue car where the brakes are simply slammed off.
The experts advice is brake in a straight line before you reach a corner, not in the middle of the bend like this.
And of course if you get into a skid turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction.
It's so important in these conditions to have light control.
In other words the driver who drives on ice tends to tense up.
But if you just feel the steering very gently and do gear changing very smoothly you can save yourself an awful lot of trouble.
It's more important than ever in weather like this to be very much aware of other drivers because in snow and ice
it takes everybody that much longer to stop, perhaps as much as ten times the distance it would normally take.
Things to check before you even set out on your journey, antifreeze for your windscreen washers, very important this.
If you can't get hold of any a little methylated spirits will do the trick.
And the manufacturers recommended amount of antifreeze in your radiator, that is a must and that's not all.
It's absolutely essential to make sure that the battery is properly maintained, that it is regularly charged, especially in weather like this.
Because when you're driving with a heater and washers and everything else going, perhaps there's more coming out of the battery than you're able to put in.
Perhaps another little known thing is the fact about headlights for instance.
Typical headlight being used for a day. Look at the difference with the quick wipe.
If you've been tempted to lower your tire pressures in the snow, the word from the experts is don't just leave them as they are.
One of the most dangerous times is when the temperature is on the point of freezing, but what are the warning signs?
Probably one of the best telltale signs is if it begins to go very quiet because the slush is no longer slush, it is turning to ice.
And therefore it will go very quiet and the steering will go very light. If ever that happens, slow right down.
What if you're stuck out in the wilds and the car breaks down, there's a snow drift, something like that. What should you do, Bill?
The best thing to do is to stay with the car. And obviously if you're going to stay with the car, you should have made some preparation in the first instance to keep some warm clothing or a blanket in the back to prevent obviously hypothermia.
A lot of people have in fact lost their life simply because they've abandoned their car and tried to walk for help. Stay with the car.
So there you are now, you all know. But now who's for tennis? It may not seem appropriate at the moment to start thinking of summer sports, but at a village close to Basingstoke you could indulge in a game of tennis whatever the weather.
We sent John Andrews, busy chap, along to investigate. Here's his report.
We're in the heart of North Hampshire in the depths of winter. There may be a watery sun filtering through, but even at midday it's still four degrees below freezing. The last place you would think to hear the thud of tennis balls against catgut.
It seems to be coming from this bubble behind me. I'll go and investigate.
Inside this strange plastic bubble are two top class tennis courts where you can keep fit and practice your skills 365 days a year.
The many down tennis centre lives under a polythene bubble at a farm at Wooden St Lawrence near Basingstoke. Indoor courts are few and far between and generally they don't come cheap.
It can cost £15 an hour to hire one.
The many down courts have cost £100,000 to build, but the higher fee is a more reasonable £5 an hour.
Tennis now, if you're looking to play it seriously, has to be played all year round.
One can do a certain amount of fitness, but you have to do some work on the court to keep your timing in there, to be able to keep up with people who are playing all year round, especially abroad.
So especially for youngsters who are developing their game, something like this, without it they would never make the top grade?
They wouldn't have a chance in my opinion competing abroad where they play indoor tennis all the time and all year round.
The actual bubble itself is designed to be able to play through the winter but at a reasonable and affordable cost.
And that is the only way really that the youngsters and the people who matter can afford to play tennis and we can broaden the base of the game that way.
The strange bubble by the farmyard has been built by farmer Hugh Oliver Bellisis in a corner of his 5,000 acre estate.
But why branch out from the livestock and land rover world of farming into all-weather tennis?
The farming community are under a certain amount of pressure with surpluses in Europe.
And we've looked at first of all golf courses and we went into it quite seriously, we got planning permission, and in fact found that it wasn't financially viable.
And so we then hit upon the idea of looking at tennis courts and an indoor facility particularly.
It is much cheaper and of course the thing that has actually killed off two of the big tennis centres in this country is the fact that they built a structure at 35 pounds a square foot and they've gone bust twice or three times.
So you've got to keep your capital costs down which enables you to keep your costs of playing down and then we'll encourage more people to play tennis which is what we need to produce really good tennis players.
Although the centre is going to be most attractive to developing young players and committed competitors, anyone can book a court for a knock around or join the coaching classes complete with video playback.
Watching Mackenroe and Lindell in action will never be the same after you've seen your own awful service in full colour close-up.
Those dreams of winning Wimbledon may mean more work than you'd imagined.
All you need now is the sound of Dan Maskell, that well-known tennis voice and you could actually imagine that it could be summer.
Well now you may remember the Southampton Tramp who narrowly escaped being crushed in a refuse skip while he's now left hospital.
He'd fallen asleep in the skip which was loaded onto the back of a rubbish lorry.
He spent two weeks in hospital but now he's made a full recovery and is settling into a new home.
Charles Waste reports.
Jimmy Hannafy fell asleep in the skip after having far too much to drink earlier this month.
He only woke up when the crusher started working, horrified refuse operators only stopped the machine when they heard his screams.
Jimmy was taken to Southampton General Hospital where he was treated for fractured ribs, shock and bruising.
After two weeks treatment in a private room sheltered from the bitter cold outside, Jimmy, who's 51, was pronounced fit enough by doctors to leave.
He says he remembers nothing of the night he spent in the refuse skip having consumed 20 pints of beer.
You're now going into bed and breakfast accommodation. Will that suit you?
Oh yeah, it's a good house.
Will you stay there?
Yeah.
What about the drink? You can give up the drink.
There's some job for me to do there. That money is no good to me. It would only last me hours.
So you're still looking to have a drink?
Good session.
After his two weeks stay at the hospital, Jimmy, who's still weak on his legs, seemed anxious to leave.
OK, you'll be good when you're home. Go on then.
You're terrible. Please help.
Because of the cold weather, ambulance services in Hampshire have been dealing with emergency cases only.
So the hospital administrator asked South today to take Jimmy the several miles to his new bed and breakfast accommodation provided by the social services.
Jimmy says that now that he's got his own room in a warm house, he'll be much more selective about where he sleeps in the future.
Well, good luck to Jimmy. I think at this stage of the programme, the end of it, we ought to say well done to all the postmen, the milkmen, the paper boys, and of course the men who have been out gritting the roads.
You're doing a splendid job.
Say something nice about them today.
Say I'm saying something nice about them today. In fact, the roads were superbly clear. Well done, you gritting men, all over the South and all our counties. We're very, very proud of you.
We are indeed.
That's it. You're back tomorrow, aren't you?
Yep, 5.15 tomorrow, so tune in to us then.
Good night.
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