TREACHEROUS road conditions led to more than 110 accidents across North Yorkshire, police revealed today.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire Police said most of the accidents had been dealt with on Saturday, stretching resources and manpower to the limit.

"Road conditions were awful, particularly on Saturday night," the spokesman said.

"Thankfully most of the accidents we dealt with were not serious. They mainly involved cars skidding into fence posts and shunting other vehicles.

"By Sunday a lot of drivers had sensibly heeded our warnings and drove more carefully and, in many cases, not at all."

Meanwhile, City of York Council has come under fire for the lack of gritting on the roads following the big freeze. Angry motorists reported ungritted, slippery road conditions throughout the city and neighbouring villages. One motorist said: "In Copmanthorpe and Bishopthorpe the road conditions were very poor with a lot of snow covering them. People told me the city centre was even worse. Travelling across the North Yorkshire County Council boundary, it was obvious the roads had been cleared and gritted."

The council's head of highway infrastructure, Damon Copperthwaite, blamed inaccurate weather forecasts on the gritting shortage and has ordered a review.

He said : "The predicted snowfall for York was for half to one inch of snow - in fact three inches fell - and on Sunday, following the snowfall, ploughs were sent

out to remove the snow, but there was insufficient snow for this to be effective.

"The forecast from the Met Office wasn't accurate, and although we had almost

continuous treatment of the road network, we were unable to keep them as

clear as we would have liked.

"We are currently reviewing the weekend events to see if it could have been

dealt with better.

"Over the weekend period we salted the road network seven times, as well as

applying sand to priority footways around the city to break up the snow and

make walking easier."

Meanwhile, dreams of a white Christmas may come true tomorrow, according to weather experts. Temperatures are expected to drop below freezing later tonight and early tomorrow, making snow showers "not unlikely".

Updated: 10:16 Monday, December 24, 2001