COUNCILS across the region are scrambling to deal with the aftermath of the traffic turmoil caused by Friday's snow.

The feeling of excitement about the falling of the white stuff quickly melted on yesterday as the reality of the traffic nightmare hit the region.

Many areas were caught off guard with roads and pavements left untreated and buried under several centimetres of snow.

Consulting with dedicated forecasting services three times per day, as well as monitoring their own sensors, councils in East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire have fared differently in dealing with the severe weather.

Both look set to persevere with their approaches to gritting and ploughing in the run up to the New Year.

Like Glasgow, gritting services in East Dunbartonshire have been heavily criticised, with locals voicing their displeasure at being left to fend for themselves.

On Baljaffray Road in Bearsden cars were reportedly stuck due to the snow as late as 10am on Friday morning.

Businesses on Milngavie Road also sent out warnings to customers about the condition of the surrounding roads.

However, East Dunbartonshire Council say that they covered all primary routes in the area overnight, 67% of the total 510km of roads in the region.

The council there say that they will now continue to repeat the gritting and ploughing of primary routes to deal with these "challenging conditions".

But residents say that several of these roads were still not safe to drive on despite these efforts.

Thomas Glen, depute chief executive for place neighbourhood and corporate assets at East Dunbartonshire Council, said: "Teams are on standby 24/7 throughout the winter to keep roads and

pavements as snow and ice-free as we possibly can.

"Crews were treating primary routes in advance of snowfalls - from 6pm Thursday night and again from 4am on Friday morning - however, the conditions have been challenging across Scotland and beyond."

Despite experiencing similar amounts of snow, roads in neighbouring council areas fared significantly better.

Preparedness was key to properly tackling the snowfall on Friday, with roads in East Renfrewshire generally well cleared.

The local gritting team for the area covered more than 313km of road on Thursday night and again on Friday morning, with seven trucks tackling priority areas before moving on to other streets.

This amounts to around 65% of the total road network in East Renfrewshire covered by gritters before most commuters woke on Friday morning.

Despite covering proportionally less ground that East Dunbartonshire, the difference in East Renfrewshire seems to have come from gritting some of their secondary and residential routes.

After dealing with priority routes, gritters then moved on to lesser routes in an attempt to make local roads safer.

This will continue over the weekend with a dedicated gritting team on standby 24 hours a day and the cleared routes continuing to be gritted and monitored.

A spokeswoman for East Renfrewshire Council said: “During periods of adverse weather such as icy and snowy conditions, we treat our priority routes twice a day, and also carry out additional gritting to these routes as required until they are clear.

"Our priority routes were treated between 4pm and 7pm Thursday night and patrols continued on these routes throughout the night, gritting as necessary.

"A second full grit was carried out on these routes between 4am and 8am on Friday and will be repeated once again over the next 24 hours."

What's in store now?

Ringing in the New Year, the weekend will see the snow die out with patchy rain and some heavy showers taking over across Saturday and early Sunday morning.

Next week will see a return to milder weather, with these slightly higher temperatures ushering in wetter and windier spells.

Highs of six or seven degrees centigrade could be seen next week with some wintry showers possible overnight on Tuesday.

Further into January Glasgow will see temperatures more like January averages, with mist and fog likely to hit the city over this time.

Several centimetres of rain are expected the week after next with strong winds accompanying this.