Want to know more about what we do in cold weather?

We’ve been very lucky so far this winter – apart from a few cold snaps, December and January have been quite mild.

But is there any bad weather on the horizon?

According to the Met Office, cold weather is predicted, with the possibility of ice and wintry showers. We’ve already had weather warnings for ice and snow in Wales.

APPLY FOR A SEPTEMBER 2019 NURSERY SCHOOL PLACE

But as it stands, it doesn’t look as though it’ll be especially disruptive – it’ll just be what we would normally expect for this time of year.

So it doesn’t look as though we’re due for another Beast from the East.

But we can only make predictions so far – and the Met Office doesn’t really know how things might change later on in February.

If conditions do get worse, what would we do?

What about gritting?

We have a fleet of gritters and hardworking volunteers from our Streetscene team who step in to drive them – they worked around the clock last year to keep roads open and safe. You can take a look at our agreed gritting routes here.

We’ve got a capacity of 8,000 tonnes of grit for spreading, which we’ve recently topped back up with 500 tonnes.

The decision on whether or not we send our gritters out can be looked at several times a day – if we go out too soon, the grit could be washed away by rain. But if we go out too late, it might not be as effective.

If you want to know if the gritters are going out you can keep an eye on our Twitter account – or watch out for #wxmgrit.

We also send out reminders via the MyUpdates system which emails updates directly to subscribers – you can subscribe to them here.

When very poor weather is expected or we are experiencing a particularly long bout of cold, freezing weather, we’ll keep you updated about where to find information on things such bin collections and school closures on this blog, our website, and our social media accounts – so please keep an eye on them.

Cllr David A Bithell, Lead Member for Environment and Transport, said: “As of right now the weather is not expected to be disruptive, but obviously we’ll keep the public up to date, and advise everyone to keep an eye on our social media accounts and the local press.

“Last year’s level of snow was exceptional, so we want to ensure that we keep everybody moving during adverse weather – which is essential to the local economy.”

The closing date for 2019 nursery school applications is February 22