‘Sudden microburst’ of snow and hail causes multi-vehicle crash in Lancashire, U.K.

A sudden hail and snow storm caused a multi-vehicle collision in Lancashire, NW England, U.K. shortly before 21:00 UTC on Tuesday, April 2, 2019.

According to Lancashire Police, 24 vehicles were involved in the pile-up which took place on M55 shortly before 21:00 UTC (22:00 BST) on Tuesday due to a 'sudden microburst' of hail and snow.

The police described the accident as a 'carnage' and closed M55 between junctions 1 and 3 in both directions. There were no serious injuries reported.

"Awful incident about 20-30 car pile-up from between Preston to Kirkham junction," resident Natalie O'Neill said on Facebook. "About 200 yards [183 m] of sleet/snow was horrible to witness, nobody knew what was going on until we came to a standstill, unfortunately, some of us couldn’t stop our cars in time which ended up in the pile-up… such an awful freak road accident."

"It was so sudden a downfall, complete whiteout," Colin Ackerley said. "I made it through but was nearly sideways at times as I slowed down, lots of cars were off the road, I hope the only damage was to cars and not people."

"Having traveled through it, an accident would be a bit of an understatement. I would call it absolute Carmageddon," Jonathan Fenton said. 

The UK Met Office issued a weather warning April 3 after overnight temperatures dipped below freezing. Single figures are expected across most of the country throughout the day.

Snow was already reported in parts of Walles, causing long delays on the roads. A small amount of snow was even reported in Cardiff on April 2, Wales Online reported.

Featured image credit: Lancs Road Police.