UK Internet visits to both Transport and Weather websites reached an all time high last week as British people flocked online to keep up to date with the latest snow developments. For the week ending January 9th 2010, Weather websites accounted for 1.5% of all UK Internet visits, three times more than the same week last year, and 26.9% more than the previous peak during the snow in February 2009.
BBC Weather was the 12th most visited website in the UK last week, while the Met Office homepage ranked 22nd. National Rail Enquiries was the 56th most visited website in the UK, up from 80th the previous week), while traffic to Transport websites in general was up 28.9% on the same week in 2009.

The bad weather has caused travel chaos across the UK, and for many people the first place they go to keep up to date with any disruptions in the Internet. In addition to the expected increase in traffic to Weather and Transport websites last week, people in the UK searched for a huge range of snow-related topics. UK Internet users searched for over 146,000 different terms containing the word ‘snow’ during the 4 weeks ending January 9th 2010, with ‘snow forecast’ topping the list. Last week searches for the term were up 378% on the same time last year.
Increases in searches for other popular terms would imply that there were opportunities for some companies amongst all the reports of lost revenues because of the weather last week; searches for ‘snow chains’ increased 23-fold on the same time last year, while searches for ‘snow boots’ were up six-fold. There also a big spike in searches relating to school closures, with much of the traffic going to Local Government websites. As the chart below illustrates, there was a 144% increase in visits to the category last week.

As you would expect, the Local Government websites that experienced the largest increase in traffic last week were in the areas worst affected by the weather. As the table below illustrates, the biggest traffic increase was in Aberdeenshire, and ‘aberdeenshire council’ and ‘aberdeenshire school closers’ were the second and third most popular Local Government search terms (‘tfl’ was number one). There was also a strong correlation between the other fast moving Local Government websites and searches for school closures in those areas.

Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter.