Whether you’re indoors or out and about today one thing is for certain - you’re probably either wrapped up warm or freezing cold!

Over the past few weeks winter has swept over the South in the form of frozen roads and bursting pipes. The gritters have been out in force trying to safeguard our roads and the Met Office has issued a severe weather warning as temperatures fall below zero.

Yesterday, snow forced schools to close in the South East and homes were flooded by freezing water after a mains pipe burst in the Thames Valley. But it’s often the elderly and vulnerable who suffer most during the cold months. Tonight on Meridian and Thames Valley we will be taking expert advice from Age Concern about how to keep safe and wrapped up warm over the next few days. If you have any tips for our viewers post them here on the blog - they may even end up on tonight’s programme.

However a group of Lifeguards have made sure the weather is not all doom and gloom this New Year.

These fearless Seaford savers braved the near-freezing sea temperatures in swim suits for their annual New Year Dip in Seaford Bay. Luckily for us it was all captured on camera and uploaded to Your News for your viewing pleasure…

 

You can upload your own video and photos of the big freeze here.

Our Brighton webcam was down for over a week due to technical issues that I can’t personally get my head around - but I’m happy to announce that it’s back up and running at www.itvlocal.com/meridian/live.

We’ve had lots of queries about the downtime from locals and Brighton expats alike - it’s a really popular view. Personally, as a fairly regular Brighton daytripper, I associate the pier and beach with good times and like to log in now and then just to take in the unique Brighton vibe.

The good news is that during the downtime, we pressed forward with getting a second regional beachcam up and running - this time in Bournemouth. It’s up today for the first time - have a look at the default view on www.itvlocal.com/meridian/live to see it, I’m afraid today’s weather is looking a bit overcast but the waves aren’t too rough for October.

By clicking on the right-hand menu from our live cams page, you can see the whole network of ITV Local regional webcams, all over England and Wales. There are some real gems in there - Newquay harbour is one of my favourites, and everyone loves Gorillacam - live from the ape enclosure at Bristol Zoo. so if you’re bored with the view from your window, check out the live views in full screen. It’s cheaper than a train ticket!

Is there any end in sight to the recent spell of bad weather? It seems not as the MET office predicts a 60% chance of severe weather across the south. The Environment Agency has also issued various flood watch warnings - many of which are in our region. For the latest information on the flood watch or to see if you are effected click here.

It paints a very bleak picture of summer indeed. In answer to Ian’s comment on Monday unfortunately it is due to persist with more unsettled wet weather continuing into the weekend. For the latest five day forecasts for weather throughout the country click here.

Could it be time to emigrate to sunnier climates?!

Here’s a quick weather update: 

We interview weather guru Martyn Davies about the summer washout. Watch the interview here.

Just when we thought a nice hot summer had finally arrived the entire region has been washed out with rain and high winds. The newsroom windows certainly capture a very dark and gloomy picture in Maidstone and with more on the way could the time for flip flops really be over already? We hope not!

The good news is that before the wet weather swept in our team were all out and about catching those last warm rays. Casey was out in Brighton as the annual Paddle Round the Pier launched. Sharon was filming at the notorious Winchester Hat Fair and also managed to catch Blondie and co at this year’s Guilfest. And I was down at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park for Zoo Thousand and Eight. We have lots of videos and blogs to come about the weekend’s events so stay tuned to find out why it’s not always a good idea crowd surfing with a guitar down your trousers.        

To keep you entertained in the meantime try answering this question…

If a 1943 Spitfire and a modern day Red Bull race plane were to fly head-to-head in a death defying time trial around the Isle of Wight who would win??!

Find out here if you picked the correct winged winner.

We’d already started to put together a list of all the ceremonies around the region and were prepared to update the site on Sunday with the latest footage… then early on Friday morning we heard of two very different events at sea which threw a spanner in the works.

First, we heard about a big sea search in the Solent after a man was reported overboard from an Isle of Wight ferry. Then, reports came in of a major threat to East Coast towns as a tidal surge was predicted to breach sea defences in Kent and Essex as well as East Anglia.

We managed to get shots of both the Solent search and Kent waves, then the sad news came in that a body had been found off the Isle of Wight and the search had been called off.

Once we’d updated, we now could focus on the tidal surge. Viewer videos and still images came in to us throughout the day via our uploads system, and we were able to pass these onto the South East newsdesk to use in bulletins and Meridian Tonight as well as feature on our front page. You can see a selection of the videos here and some stills here.

Meanwhile, channel assistant Heather, who hadn’t planned on working on news that day, pitched in to pull together the Remembrance Sunday material. The whole team - even those not usually concerned with content - helped us out in various ways.

It was a busy day on three fronts, but the effort paid off - we had one of our busiest days EVER in terms of viewer visits.

Never a dull moment here at the coal face….