Cold weather could stay until late April, say forecasters

Battered communities in the UK remain without power and road links after the heaviest snowfall of the year – and with no consolation from forecasters who now foresee wintery conditions until late April.

The Met Office's furthest prediction stops at 30 days – 22 April – when colder-than-average conditions and frosty nights are expected to keep their grip on Scotland, northern England and possibly further south.

Areas spared the full force of the chilly weather pattern, governed by easterly winds from Scandinavia and beyond, look likely to get rain instead. The weekend's disruption saw soaking weather play a major part in disruption, with flooding and avalanches in the most affected regions, Wales and the south-west of England.

The death toll stands at two. The body of 25-year-old Gary Windle was found in snow at Briarfield near Burnley, in Lancashire, a day after he set out to walk home after midnight following an evening out with friends. In Looe, Cornwall, a woman named locally as Susan Norman died when part of her house collapsed in a landslip.

In the short term, a pause in the snow is expected, helping power engineers working on downed cables and snowploughs tackling drifts on minor roads to some villages in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the north-west. Generators have been shipped to Scottish islands, and water has been reconnected to 1,000 homes in Northern Ireland. Power there may not be fully back on for a week.

More than 1,000 homes in Scotland and Cumbria are not expected to be reconnected until late on Monday in spite of more than 200 engineers working throughout Sunday night in Dumfries and Galloway alone. Drivers who abandoned cars in Cumbria and north Wales have been asked not to return to them without police help, and the A595 along the Cumbria coast remains closed after 70 people were rescued and housed with local people or at community centres.

Most cut-off areas have managed on such neighbourliness and stocks of essentials, and there were no complaints at England's highest pub, the Tan Hill Inn on the Durham border with North Yorkshire, where a backgammon circle is flourishing among guests who have spent four days snowed in.

The likely return of snowfall on Good Friday suggests the UK may get its first white Easter for five years.

Yellow "be aware" warnings are now a regular feature – along with a brave snapshot of daffodils – of the Met Office's online maps. The forecasters are concentrating on the danger of ice and wind chill, warning that "lying snow in many areas will melt on roads and pavements by day, refreezing by night to give icy patches. The public should be aware of the potential for disruption to travel due to icy patches and snow blowing back on to roads."

The MeteoGroup forecaster Andy Ratcliffe said: "Monday's snow will be mainly confined to the east of Scotland and north-east England where there will be a dusting, but nothing significant. Elsewhere there will be some snow showers but nothing like the accumulations we've seen over the last few days, and it will remain very cold and breezy.

"Into the week there will be more scattered snow flurries and there is the potential for more widespread snow returning at the end of the week."

Things are limping back towards normality on the Scottish island of Arran, which suffered a complete loss of power at the weekend, and in Kintyre where 3,500 homes were still blacked out on Sunday night. Helicopters have been used to find faults on power lines unreachable because of gale-force winds and drifting snow.

Scotland's transport minister, Keith Brown, told BBC Radio Scotland: "There are ferries going on new routes, from Kennacraig to Campbeltown, taking generators. There's food being supplied to local shops. There are individual burger vans and food vans being established to try to help people, and contact is being made with anybody who might be in a vulnerable situation.

"It is difficult. The A83, which is crucial to getting the infrastructure repaired, has only reopened this morning. It opened to emergency vehicles last night and, more generally, under police convoy this morning so it is taking some time. Contact has been made with those people who are in extreme circumstances to make sure they have, if they need it, heat and also food. That's being supplied by local responders."

Rail problems added to the dislocation as people went back to work on Monday morning, with speed restrictions of 5mph in parts of south-west London at the height of the commuter rush and delays in Surrey, Sussex and on the east coast mainline near the capital. Services to the north from King's Cross have been reduced and there have been signalling problems and breakdowns between Ipswich and Felixstowe, Northampton and Rugby and Sheffield, Huddersfield and Leeds.

Scotland has had rail delays of up to 90 minutes between Inverness and Aberdeen. Services were held up between Bridgend and Swansea in Wales and halted altogether on the Cumbrian coast.

Butterfly Conservation warned of a second worrying year for UK species after a fall in numbers last year because of wet weather at key times in the breeding cycle. The group's head of monitoring, Tom Brereton, said: "Butterflies have proved that given favourable conditions and the availability of suitable habitat they can recover, but with numbers in almost three-quarters of UK species at a historically low ebb any tangible recovery will be more difficult than ever."

Bets on snow at Easter have seen odds fall to 4/6, with 5/1 offered against the holiday being the coldest since records began. More specialised punts at Ladbrokes include 16/1 against icebergs on the Thames disrupting the Oxford and Cambridge boat race and 8/1 against the Queen wearing snowshoes to go to church on Easter Sunday – down from 20/1 before the weekend.

The weather's white lining is being enjoyed by ski resorts in Scotland where business is close to breaking records in spite of regular disruption from blizzards. In a reverse of TV pictures showing the UK basking in sun a year ago, the CairnGorm and other resorts have rerun videos of last March's bare pistes, which this year have clocked up more than 175,000 skiers and snowboarders with another two months to go.