Bad weather prompts flood warnings and caravan park rescue
Eleven people rescued in North Yorkshire as Met Office forecasts snow in northern England over coming week
Floods have wreaked havoc across northern England in recent weeks. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images
Residents had to be rescued from a flooded caravan park in North Yorkshire overnight, as the Environment Agency issued 31 flood warnings across the UK.
Eleven people were rescued from caravans in North Yorkshire as heavy rain threatened towns and villages in the county, while the Met Office issued a weather warning for south-east England and east Anglia.
The Met Office said temperatures across Britain are expected to drop to as low as -6C over the next two days, and snow is predicted in northern England and Scotland over the coming week, potentially hindering recovery efforts in flood-devastated areas of Cumbria.
North Yorkshire fire and rescue service said they were summoned to Knaresborough, four miles north east of Harrogate, at 2am this morning.
"Eleven people in total were assisted from caravans by ourselves at a caravan park near the river Nidd in Knaresborough overnight," a spokeswoman said.
"We sent out 14 firefighters in three fire appliances [engines] and a boat."
She said the boat was used to transport the people to the safety of a "local clubhouse" in Knaresborough. The spokeswoman said fire crews would be returning to the river today to check water levels.
The environment agency has 31 flood warnings – its second most serious measure – in place across the UK, including 20 in North Yorkshire. A spokesman for the agency said it came "very close to issuing a severe flood warning overnight, but the threat dropped".
The Met Office issued a weather warning for south-east England and East England overnight as rain spread from North Yorkshire. Devon was also hit by heavy rainfall as water levels rose by as much as 4ft on Sunday.
Robin Downton, a forecaster at the Met Office, said the days ahead would see low temperatures before a wet weather front arrives from the Atlantic.
"We are expecting widespread frost on Monday night and in frost prone areas such as the west Midlands and north-east of England temperatures will drop as low as -5 or -6C," he said.
Some parts of Britain experienced the first snows of winter on Saturday. The Llanberis Pass in north Wales saw an inch and a half of snowfall as well as some higher ground in Scotland such as the Cairngorms.
Cockermouth in Cumbria, which was submerged just over a week ago by more than 12 inches of rainfall in 24 hours, was another area which could be hit by as much as 3-5cm of snow, MeteoGroup UK said.
The Prince of Wales visited the area over the weekend to boost morale as locals cleaned up the destruction caused by the floods. The prince thanked emergency services for their work in the recovery operation, and paid tribute to PC Bill Barker who died while turning traffic away from a bridge when it collapsed.
He also urged visitors not to cancel holidays in Cumbria, where businesses are struggling to recover after the damage.
Army engineers have begun building the foundations of a footbridge to reconnect the two halves of Workington where one bridge collapsed. Households in the Northside area of Workington face long detours to get to the town centre or local schools.
Six bridges in the county have collapsed since last week's heavy rainfall, and Downton said more rain was due this week and would "continue to be a nuisance to areas which have been hit by flooding". But Cumbria would be spared from the worst as the heavy fall moves eastwards, he added.
The flooding during the weekend caused two deaths. Paula Deacon, 57, died after slipping and falling off a bridge into the river Seaton at Hessenford, in east Cornwall, and police pulled the body of a man thought to be in his 30s from the river Taff in Cardiff.
Despite the bad weather, the Met Office predicted last week that Britain would have a mild winter because of the El Niño developing in the Pacific Ocean
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