It's snowing again... and it's here until March, say forecasters

Rain coming up from the south west of England was meeting colder air to bring snow to Wales, the Midlands, northern England and southern Scotland.

"There could be further snow in the next few days. We are not out of the woods yet," said Stephen Davenport, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association.

While temperatures today were as high as 9C (48F) in Cornwall, they were as low as 1C (34F) in Scotland.

Mr Davenport went on: "While the South gets rain today, other parts of Britain will have snow later, with a few centimetres in places.

"It may be a bit milder in the South in the next few days, with more rain than snow, but more snow could follow in some areas and there will be cold, north-easterly winds bringing possible snowfalls to Scotland and northern England on Thursday and Friday.

"At the start of next week it could be generally colder, with snow possibly coming into southern areas as well."

People were warned not to walk in the fells in the Lake District after climbers had to be rescued following an avalanche at Pinnacle Ridge on St Sunday Crag near Patterdale.

Two of the climbers remain in hospital.

With a few days of February left, the winter of 2009/2010 is shaping up to be the coldest since 1978/79, with the provisional average winter temperature for England being just 2.4C (36.3F).

This winter is likely to be the third coldest in the last 50 years and the 10th coldest in the last 120 years.

Mr Davenport said today: "We may not have had the long, continuous snow we had, for example, in 1962/63, but there have been four or five lots of heavy snow this winter.

"That satellite picture taken last month showed the very unusual sight of the entire country blanketed by snow. It may have looked very pretty from space but it was not so pleasant to be actually caught up in it."