NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response.

There are around 2.2 million heating oil users across the UK and one thing they will agree on is the fact that heating oil prices tend to be quite volatile when the snow starts to fall.

Heavy snowfall caused chaos across Great Britain for 1000′s of heating oil users in mid-January when they realised that their heating oil tanks were lower than they expected – resulting in them taking to the internet to order their heating oil.

Thankfully the vast majority of heating oil users had stocked up well in advance of the cold-snap, which took pressure off many heating oil suppliers. The map above shows the severity of the snow seen in January 2013, with the vast majority of Great Britain being covered.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-colour image on January 26, 2013, courtesy Jeff Schmaltz.