Icy weather conditions affected parts of Europe today, and snow and ice forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights in the Netherlands and led to the death of five people on French roads.
Domestic rail traffic in the Netherlands was completely suspended this morning after an IT system outage worsened disruptions to the country’s rail network. Trains started running in parts of the country a few hours later, but problems persisted in the region around Amsterdam, a popular tourist destination.
High-speed Eurostar services to Paris from Amsterdam were canceled or delayed. More than 400 flights were canceled at the city airport Schiphol, mostly by the Dutch subsidiary Air France-KLM, as winter weather paralyzed traffic in one of the main European transit hubs for the fifth day in a row.
Spanish citizen Javier Sepulveda has been blocked at Schiphol for three days and cannot return home to Norway. Sepulveda said he got in line outside the KLM counter at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday and six hours later was still nowhere near the front of the line.
I can only describe the situation as chaotic, crazy – said the 39-year-old.
In Germany, temperatures in the south and east dropped well below minus 10 degrees Celsius early this morning. Large parts of the country were covered in snow, including regions near the North Sea, where thick layers of snow are rare. Meteorologists are forecasting a storm on Friday, with heavy snowfall expected in the north and east.
In France, a prolonged cold wave brought freezing temperatures overnight after snow fell in the Paris region and large parts of the country yesterday. Six small airports were closed in the west and north of France, but no cancellations are expected at the two main Paris airports.
Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot urged people to travel as little as possible on the roads and to work from home, and warned that the thawed snow, which then refrozen, creates dangerous conditions on the roads overnight.
Five people have died in traffic accidents related to the freezing conditions since yesterday, BFMTV and other French media reported. In Paris, bus traffic was chaotic as it was restored after yesterday’s suspension.
The Met Office in Great Britain said yesterday that the threat of wintry weather could continue throughout the week for much of the country. A yellow warning has been issued for snow in central Scotland.
Heavy snow and rain caused chaos across the Western Balkans this week – roads were closed, power supply was interrupted, rivers flooded. Yesterday, a woman died in Sarajevo after a tree buried in wet snow fell on her, it says Hayat TV.
