Gridlock as 'relentless snowfall' causes chaos on Scotland's roads

Motorists are being forced to spend the night in their cars on the M80 in the central belt as severe snow storms continue to pummel Scotland.

A red weather warning - the highest possible alert - was issued by the Met Office on Wednesday afternoon, with the wintry showers not set to ease off until 10am on Thursday.

An amber weather warning for large parts of the east coast of Scotland remains in place, and is set to end at 6pm.

Both Police Scotland and the Scottish Government had urged motorists not to travel in light of the life-threatening conditions, warning that they would be disrupted and likely stranded.

However, hundreds of drivers became stuck on the M80 north of Glasgow on Wednesday night, with HGVs losing traction on the slippery roads.

Gordon Stevenson spent nearly 11 hours on the roads before he finally arrived home in Motherwell - he'd set off from Dundee around 2.30pm on Wednesday.

He said: "The teams on the carriageways are doing a sterling job but I don't think they're going to get better any time soon.

"Overall, conditions on the roads were fine until I got to about Stirling. Then it started to come down really heavily, it went down to one lane and that was that.

"It was quite eerie out there. A lot of the cars were sitting with their lights and engines off which made it feel like a car park on what is usually quite a busy road."

The Transport Minister Humza Yousaf has been keeping an eye on the network from the Traffic Scotland headquarters outside Edinburgh.

He said: "We have a couple priortities we're working on, clearly one is to recover the situation on the M80.

"We're starting to make progress on that but the relentless snowfall is making that very challenging indeed.

"The other priority is to give the best advice I can, which is simply put: do not travel if you are in the red weather warning or indeed the amber weather warning area which extends to Thursday 6pm.

"This is a severe amber warning stretching from the east of the country right the way through the central belt and far west out to Port Glasgow and Greenock.

"If you do travel during these warnings, then not only will you be disrupted, but there's a high possibility that you may well be stranded for many hours. Do not take the risk, do not travel and please heed the travel advice."