Snowstorm Leaves Dozens Stranded for Days in a Remote U.K. Pub

Up on a hill in Yorkshire, England, a crowd filled a pub on Friday to listen to an Oasis tribute band. Inside the pub, the Tan Hill Inn, the beers were cold, the fires were warming and the musicians were electric.

But outside, the winds were howling and the snow was swirling. The pub patrons knew the forecast was dire, but not so much that piles of snow as high as three feet would block the pub’s exits, said Nicola Townsend, the inn’s general manager.

After the tribute band, Noasis, finished its set, the local authorities said it was not safe to drive home, Ms. Townsend said on Sunday night.

So the patrons, the band members and seven inn employees stayed the night.

And then another.

And on Sunday night, they stayed another.

Though the roads were not safe to travel, a group of off-roaders took a couple of parents home to their young children, Ms. Townsend said. A local mountain rescue group also helped evacuate a man who needed medical treatment for an “ongoing condition.”

The group of 61 strangers was down to about 50 on Monday morning, Ms. Townsend told a television morning program. A few hours later, a snowplow passed through the area, allowing a majority of the people who had been stranded at the pub to begin their journey home, she said.

By Monday evening, even the musicians had found their way home.

“Noasis have left the building!” the band said on Facebook. “Thanks to everyone for your messages of support, thanks to everyone for the camaraderie within the venue.”

Only two guests remained at the pub on Monday afternoon, Ms. Townsend said: “Young girls who are not confident to drive on the roads as they are, so they’ll stay tonight and go home tomorrow.”

Ms. Townsend, who had been chronicling the pub’s ordeal — and news coverage of it — on Facebook, said she was “planning on a decent night’s sleep tonight.”

Guests were emotional as they said their goodbyes on Monday, she said, “because we’ve had such a good time meeting new friends, getting to know new people.”

To pass the time, they took pub quizzes, watched movies like “Grease” and “Mamma Mia!” and sang karaoke, she said on Sunday.

“Lots of Oasis at the moment,” she said, adding that the pub-goers have started calling the tribute band “Snowasis.”

Band members had to cancel a performance on Saturday night because they were snowed in. “We have no way of making it to our gig,” the band said on Facebook.

Those at the pub enjoyed a few beers but no one was “getting loud and drunk,” Ms. Townsend said, because they wanted to be “respectful of each other.”

Some of those who were stranded already had rooms at the inn, while others had parked their motor homes outside. The rest crammed into the lounge, where they slept on sofas or on the floor. Employees supplied them with mattresses, blankets and pillows and kept the fireplaces roaring.

The pub is in Richmond, a town in North Yorkshire, more than 200 miles northwest of London.

Outside the pub, Britain was reeling from the storm, which has been blamed for the deaths of at least three people who died in separate episodes on Friday.

A man died in Cumbria, England, after a tree hit him, the police there said, while the other two — a man in Northern Ireland and a man in Aberdeenshire, Scotland — were struck by falling trees in their cars, the authorities said.

The storm paralyzed swaths of Britain’s power grid and left thousands without power. The Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, issued several warnings since Friday about high winds and snow from the storm, which it named Storm Arwen.

A video shared on social media on Sunday night showed snow blanketing the doorway and the cars parked outside, though emergency workers looked to be clearing a path out of the pub.

The episode has drawn attention from around the world, and the inn has kept people updated on Facebook. In a post on Sunday night, it jokingly called the pub-goers “inmates” and said that “some are at breaking point.”

But Ms. Townsend said that, for the most part, “everybody seems to be really quite happy.”

“The best way I can describe it is it’s like being at a party with all your friends,” she said, adding that the inn would not run out of food because it stocks up for the winter.

Those gathered shared roast dinners, a couple of beers and even a buffet (on the house) with “lots of different picky bits,” she said. Patrons helped wash dishes and took up a collection for the staff.

“We will ALWAYS remember this group of amazing people who came together, and hopefully, in challenging circumstances, enjoyed what we all think was a life-changing experience,” another Facebook post said.

It was not the first time people have been snowed in at the inn. Ms. Townsend said this also happened on New Year’s Day in 2010. Waitrose & Partners, a British grocery chain, filmed a commercial at the inn in 2017 featuring snowbound patrons enjoying a meal together.

The group stuck in the pub may have started on Friday as strangers, but they would leave as friends, Ms. Townsend said, adding, “We’ve even talked about having a reunion next year.”

Derrick Bryson Taylor contributed reporting.