Disrupts airports and road traffic:
Heavy snow hits across Europe
UK: Snow and freezing temperatures severely disrupted airports in
Germany and Britain and caused chaos and deaths on roads across Europe
Tuesday.
More than 200 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt airport in Germany,
the continent’s third busiest, while southern German states were
blanketed by snow.
Large parts of Poland were covered in thick snow, causing hundreds of
accidents on the roads and at least four people were killed on snowbound
roads in the Czech Republic.
It was so cold in France that electricity network RTE warned of cuts
in the supply as the country looked set to top record demand levels
while 20 percent of high-speed train services to the hard hit southeast
were cancelled.
Switzerland suffered its coldest November night for 45 years as
temperatures plunged below minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees
Fahrenheit), according to national weather service Meteosuisse.
Even Spain and Portugal were shivering after snow fell in the
northern half of the Iberian peninsula.
Britain has been taken by surprise by its earliest widespread
snowfall since 1993, forcing hundreds of schools in Scotland and rural
parts of England to close and causing treacherous conditions on roads
and at smaller airports.
Scotland and northeast England had fresh snowfall and the freezing
weather has started moving down England’s east coast while London had
its first sprinkling of snow this winter.
London City Airport, a popular departure point for business
travellers, was forced at one point to suspend all flights because of
snow and ice before resuming with a heavily interrupted service.
Edinburgh, Scotland’s busiest airport, was disrupted for a second
day, but London’s Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest airports, said
all its flights were operating normally. Britain’s Met Office issued
severe weather warnings for most regions of the country and warned snow
was heading south.
A 53-year-old man was crushed to death when a recovery truck rolled
into two other vehicles in snowy conditions on a motorway near Doncaster
in northern England, police said.
Scotland, on St Andrew’s Day, its national day, recorded the coldest
temperature in Britain overnight Monday with the mercury plunging to
minus 15 degrees Celsius (five degrees Fahrenheit). London, Wednesday,
AFP
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