Apocalypse snow: snowmen of the moment, and more icy fun

Nothing invokes British silliness like a few days of snowy weather. Here we award the weekend's snowpeople a five-carrot ranking and defrost the best of the rest of the icy fun

You couldn't make it up! It's 'elf 'n' safety gone mad. A dry ski slope in Shropshire forced to close because of the wrong type of snow. That is: actual snow. Managers at the Telford Snowboard and Ski Centre said on Friday that their 85m slope was skiable but that conditions on surrounding roads made it too dangerous to open. And so local skiers with a rare shot at actual snow rather than the horrid, skin-ripping bristles they're used to had no option but to ski on open roads in Bristol or headlong into snowmen in parks (you know who you were).

Taking kitty by surprise

If you thought we humans were unprepared for the snow imagine being Fletcher. Somewhere in Britain, the kitten explored the several inches of white stuff carpeting his backyard in a clip posted online by his owner yesterday. Fletcher's not sure what's stranger – the weird flakes flicking his ears, the way his paws disappear with every step, or the cooing of the million people who watched his YouTube debut yesterday. Have a look yourself above at ind.pn/snowcat.

A cold new ball game

Forget about building snowmen or making snow angels, surely the most spectacular thing to do is to create snow marbles. And looking at Twitter, plenty of people have been at it. Simply fill balloons with water and food colouring then place them outside until they have frozen. Carefully remove the balloons with a pair of scissors and you're left with giant, colourful marbles to decorate your garden with. Much more impressive than a mound of snow with a carrot shoved in it.

Choose your target

Football fans flinging snowballs at players is a concept almost as old as the game itself. This weekend's inductees into the snowball-chucking hall of fame came from Brentford and Blackburn.

Predictably, the Indian poultry moguls from Venky's who've made themselves incredibly unpopular in Lancashire were given a frosty (sorry) reception when arriving at Ewood Park – with owner Anuradha Desai's husband Jitendra copping an snowball in the face.

More surprising, were events at Griffin Park, west London, where Brentford manager Uwe Rosler had to take to the pitch to ask fans to stop pelting Tranmere goalie Owain Fon Williams with snowballs (and, according to the Daily Mail, lighters and coins).

The M4 tank commander

Snow makes people do funny things. Most are usually less dangerous than the Audi driver spotted by Twitter user Jonathan Ellis who'd decided that removing a porthole's worth of snow from the front window was adequate enough to drive through the most difficult of conditions on the M4. All hail the Tank Commander.

Revenge is best served frozen

Where an Englishman sees snow he sees balls, and victims. But in Leeds a group of teenagers got their comeuppance when they hurled their frozen missiles from a bridge at what looks like firemen inexplicably occupying a barge armed with giant pressure hoses.

You can guess the rest (or watch it).