Yesterday was the busiest ever day for weather websites in the UK. As the chart below illustrates, websites in our Weather category picked up 1.6% of all UK Internet visits, equivalent to 1 in every 63.

And once people discovered that it was snowing outside, the next task was to find a good excuse to stay at home and make snowmen rather than brave the journey to work! The National Rail website crashed after receiving three times its normal level of traffic, while Transport for London’s site experienced a five-fold increase in visits.

Yesterday was also the last day of the January football transfer window, giving many of those people stuck at home something to worry about in the absence of work. As the chart below illustrates, the biggest beneficiaries were the BBC Sport and Sky Sports websites. Sky almost caught up with its rival, but not quite: yesterday (02/02/09) BBC Sport was the 15th most visited website in the UK, while Sky ranked 16th.

The two biggest transfer stories yesterday were Robbie Keane’s return to Spurs from Liverpool, and Andrei Arshavin’s (still not 100% confirmed) move from Zenit St. Petersburg to Arsenal. Both of the north London clubs’ websites experienced spikes in traffic yesterday, with Arsenal overtaking Manchester United to become the second most visited Premier League club after Liverpool.

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