Cold weather, leicester race, abandoned

Leicestershire woke up to freezing conditions this morning as the cold snap continued to hit the country.

Leicester race course has had to abandon this afternoon’s meeting due to a frozen track.

Snow has hit parts of the country as the cold snap continues. People walk their dog on Dunkery Hill, on Exmoor, in Somerset.

Clerk of the course Jimmy Stevenson inspected the track at 8am but after temperatures dropped further than expected, he was left with little choice but to call off the card.

He said: “We have abandoned. We were only expecting minus 2C overnight but it got down to minus 6.4C.

“The predicted high for today is 4C or possibly 5C but not until about 2pm, which gives us no chance."

See the five-day weather forecast for Leicester and Leicestershire.

Across the UK forecasters warned that temperatures will hover around 0C (32F) for most of the day, before plunging as low as -7C (19.4F) in some places tonight.

Aisling Creevey, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, said: “There was little snow forecast today, apart from the chance of snow flurries on the North Sea coast and show showers in the same area tomorrow.

She added: “Friday is the day we are keeping an eye on. Eastern England could see snow showers, with a couple of centimetres of snow in Kent. But there is a lot of uncertainty at the moment.”