Kim BriscoeNorfolk's gritters will be on standby tonight as heavy snowfalls are expected across parts of East Anglia.Today's sprinkling of snow saw more than a dozen schools close across the county and flights between Norwich Airport and the north of the UK suffered some delays.Kim Briscoe

Norfolk's gritters will be on standby tonight as heavy snowfalls are expected across parts of East Anglia.

Today's sprinkling of snow saw more than a dozen schools close across the county and flights between Norwich Airport and the north of the UK suffered some delays.

But while much of Norfolk escaped with little or no snow, except in the west where there was heavy snowfall, the Arctic weather is expected to tighten its grip on the East, as a band of heavy snow showers moves south across the country.

John Laws, forecaster for the University of East Anglia's Weatherquest, said: 'The snow showers will be heavier, accumulating throughout Wednesday.

'It will be another cold night tonight and back down to minus 3C. It may get a little bit warmer along the north Norfolk coast but the breezes will still make it seem very cold.'

A Norfolk County Council spokesman said the gritters will be out tonight from 6pm to lay down fresh grit and will be on standby overnight to see what happens.

In Suffolk, meanwhile, drivers are being warned to stick to the main roads as from tomorrow, the council will only salt its priority 1 routes, which includes A and B roads, routes to main hospitals and fire stations and routes with more than 4,000 movements a day, but will not salt other roads.

The move has come after the council's salt supplies have been redirected to the north of the UK where the weather has been more extreme and salt stocks have been depleted.

A Norfolk County Council spokesman said: 'We will have to see what develops as there may be significant snow or very little.

'We've been able to get into the town centres and grit some of the pavements more than what we expected today as there was less snow than expected. These things change by the hour and it looks like there may be more snow showers moving from the west to the east.'

The 14 schools which closed today included Costessey Infant School, Corpusty Primary and Pulham CE VC Primary School due to heating problems.

Meanwhile, drivers struggled with icy conditions. Bard Hill in Salthouse was blocked near the entrance to the Dun Cow pub for much of the morning, after a crash involving a lorry and two cars. A council gritting team was called out to "intensively treat" the road.

A tractor and trailer, a van, a Range Rover and an Audi car were involved in a collision in Ringstead Road, Docking.

Water lorries were among those getting into difficulties on Clockcase Road, at Clenchwarton , near King's Lynn.

Norwich-based breakdown recovery firm RAC dealt with more than 7,500 call outs across the country yesterday. The company, which is part of Aviva, was getting between 1,300 and 2,500 calls an hour.

EDF Energy said it was not aware of any weather-related power problems in Norfolk. Thousands were left without electricity, some for three days and nights, after heavy snowfalls two weeks ago.

National Grid warned power suppliers to use less gas after seeing a 30pc rise on normal seasonal demand during the cold snap.

Manchester Airport was temporarily closed, affecting flights from Norwich, and National Express East Anglia has warned passengers its services may be affected tomorrow.

A spokesman said: 'We have been advised that snow is likely to fall across many parts of the East Anglia network on Wednesday.

'Some of this is likely to be heavy so in anticipation of this, and to provide the best possible levels of service, National Express East Anglia is planning to operate a revised timetable throughout the day.

'We will publish the revised timetable on our website as soon as it becomes available.'

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