Ice and snow warning for most of Scotland as hundreds of schools closed

A fresh snow and ice warning for almost all of Scotland stretching into Thursday has been issued.

The Met Office yellow warning is from 22:00 on Wednesday until noon on Thursday, covering all areas apart from Shetland.

Hundreds of schools across the country have remained closed for a third day as snow continues to grip the north and north east of Scotland.

Schools in Aberdeen, AberdeenshireandMoraywere shut, while only about 50 of 200 schools were open in the Highlands - where it was the first day of the new term.

Aberdeen City Council said a thaw, current weather forecast and school risk assessments suggested that "almost all" schools would be open at some point on Thursday morning, pending final checks.

Aberdeenshire Council said that for Thursday it would revert back to local decision-making for opening schools, following blanket decisions for the last three days.

However, it said it anticipated only a "limited number" would be opening.

Moray and Highland schools will also decide on a case-by-case basis.

Highland Council said about 14 of its schools, including Tain Royal Academy and Golspie High School, had already decided to stay shut on Thursday.

In Aberdeen, there were signs of a thaw overnight, with city centre roads the clearest they have been for days, and heavy snow falling from building roofs.

In the Highlands, Inverness, Ross-shire, Sutherland and Badenoch and Strathspey were among the worst affected areas.

But improving conditions in some areas meant schools in the Western Isles and Shetland as well as some in Orkney could reopen.

Eilidh MacKinnon, team leader at Aberdeen Cyrenians, a charity which supports homeless and vulnerable people, said the current weather situation was making things even harder for isolated people.

They have had to ration the food parcels they are giving out as the weather has caused problems getting donations transported from their warehouse on the other side of the city.

She said they were worried that it could mean they will not have enough food left by the end of the week and they could have to close as a result.

"We have had people coming out of pure necessity for food provision because they've been stuck at home with no access to anything and limited funds and they've needed to come out in the weather today, and Monday and Tuesday, to get access to food," she told BBC Scotland News.

"For some it's staying at home - in likely a cold home - with no food. Or going out to get the food they need to at least have a warm cup of tea."

She said they have been operating on a skeleton staff because it's been difficult for staff to get in.

"We've had a lot of difficulties getting to our warehouse which has limited our provision here so we're running incredibly low because of that," she said.

"We're running very, very low on things that we have in stock for people, so we've had to ration our food parcels today.

"If we don't get a delivery tomorrow, it's likely we won't be open on Friday, because we won't have anything to give people."

Some places in the northern Scotland have now had fresh snowfall every day since the start of the new year.

Aberdeenshire Council's declare a major incident on Tuesday, meaning it can redeploy staff to try to get on top of the challenge.

Chief executive Jim Savege said: "The declaration of the incident is mainly an internal mechanism for the council that allows me to divert more staff and resources towards priority activity than we've been doing already."

He said it would also help with requests for mutual aid from other councils.

"So we've got more staff deployed for example to work on road clearance and footway clearance and we've got additional kit coming in from other local authorities as well."

The co-leader of Aberdeen City Council, Ian Yuill, told BBC Scotland News it had been the most intense and sustained period of snow he could remember in more than 50 years.

He said the authority had 15 snowploughs out on the roads, 14 pavement ploughs - and had hired in another 24 diggers to clear the snow.

He said: "The big challenge this time is it has continued to snow – so every time it snows both the pavement ploughs and the road ploughs have to go back out again to re-treat and re-plough the priority roads and pavements in the city."

A spokeswoman for the AA said its teams had attended almost 13,000 breakdowns across the UK by 16:00 on Tuesday while the RAC said drivers in the worst-hit areas "need to be considering whether it's safe to get behind the wheel".

Police Scotland said the impact of the snow is still likely to be felt over the next few days in the north and north-east of Scotland, and urged people to check up on those who might be vulnerable.

Assistant chief constable Alan Waddell said: "Local resilience partnerships are continuing to meet to co-ordinate and deliver the response to disruption experienced by communities in the north and north-east of Scotland following heavy snowfall over the weekend.

"Some services may be impacted by adverse weather and I would encourage the public to check on neighbours or relatives, if they are able to do so safely."