In an explainer on its website, National Highways says it shuts M48 Severn Bridge to all traffic when they expect gusts above 40 knots (46mph).<\/p>\n
It then remains closed “until wind speeds have dropped”.<\/p>\n
If wind speeds exceed 70 knots (80mph), they also close the nearby M4 Prince of Wales Bridge.<\/p>\n
“Traffic can still travel between England and Wales by following a diversion using the M5, M50, A40 and A449,” the agency says.<\/p>\n
National Highways says their traffic officers “previously filtered vulnerable westbound traffic (lorries, motorbikes, and high-sided vehicles) during high winds”.<\/p>\n
“This involved fewer full closures of the bridge. However, it meant that traffic officers had to physically filter vulnerable vehicles on site to stop them travelling on the bridge.<\/p>\n
“Working in high wind, as well as poor weather and low visibility, became increasingly hazardous for our teams.<\/p>\n
“This is why we decided on safety grounds to stop filtering high sided vehicles and motorcycles during high winds.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an explainer on its website, National Highways says it shuts M48 Severn Bridge to all traffic when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,1565,1562,1564,1563,50,1567,51,47,52,48,1566,1561],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-high-winds","tag-m4","tag-m48-severn-bridge","tag-national-highways","tag-news","tag-prince-of-wales-bridge","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-traffic-diversion","tag-traffic-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}