HEAVY snow on Tuesday night caused parts of South Gloucestershire to come to a standstill.

All schools in Yate, Chipping Sodbury, Winterbourne and Frampton Cotterell closed today, giving pupils a day of fun sledging and snowballing.

Many workers also opted to stay at home after the Highways Agency warned motorists not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

South Gloucestershire Council said it had large stocks of salt and gritters had been out all night on Tuesday. A spokesman said today: “Two full gritting runs have been carried out during the night covering some 200 miles of the district's roads.

“Crews have been out ploughing all night and are continuing their runs this morning with further runs due to be carried out throughout the day.

“We have over 3,000 tonnes of salt in store with another delivery planned for later in the month."

If the snow freezes the council said it would prioritise major routes and bus routes.

“We may not always be able to carry out precautionary salting of all routes,” he added. “In heavy snowfall, our priority will be to clear the main routes plus at least one route to every village. We will give priority to those with the largest population, and those with no shops or bus services.”

All council-run bus services were cancelled today and South Gloucestershire Bus and Coach Company was running a limited service. First cancelled all buses for the day and mobile library services were also cancelled.

The prolonged cold weather and heavy snow is being pushed over from the Arctic, resulting in some of the lowest temperatures in the region for 30 years. Further snow showers are expected and temperatures will plummet to minus eight at night.