Why freeze in Europe if you can afford a trip to sunny Tenerife?
Heavy snowfalls forced some of Europe’s busiest airports to close and wreaked havoc on roads and railways as an unseasonable cold snap swept the continent, claiming at least 15 lives. Temperatures dropped to as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius in some parts of Germany, while driving rain in Italy triggered the collapse of two Roman walls in Pompeii and flooding in Venice.
Thirteen people died of exposure in central Europe, including eight in Poland. Most were under the influence of alcohol, according to police.
Two people died in England in accidents blamed on the weather, one in a motorcycle crash and the other after falling into a freezing lake.
Albania meanwhile proclaimed a state of natural disaster in the north due to heavy floods, and more than 200 people were evacuated from the region near Shkodra as hundreds of houses filled with water.
Transport chaos hit the whole of the continent as the snow spread, and Britain – shivering in the earliest widespread snowfalls of winter since 1993 – was one of the countries worst affected.
London’s Gatwick Airport, Europe’s eighth busiest passenger air hub, will be shut until at least 0600 GMT on Thursday as staff worked to clear the runways.
A Qantas spokesman said none of their flights had been delayed. He said the airline operates out of London Heathrow Airport and Germany’s Frankfurt Airport, both of which have not closed.
Edinburgh Airport, Scotland’s busiest, was shut and delays were reported at airports in Glasgow and Aberdeen in Scotland, Newcastle in northeast England and Jersey in the Channel Islands.
British forecasters said Wednesday had been the coldest December 1 on record, with no hope of a let-up in the coming days.
British insurer RSA warned that bad weather in the run up to Christmas would have a major impact on the economy and could lead to significant losses for struggling businesses.
“This cold front couldn’t come at a worse time for the UK,” said David Greaves, director of RSA.
“If we lose just one fifth of our daily GDP through companies not being able to open and people cancelling spending plans on events and shopping, we’re looking at about £1.2 billion every working day,” he said.
Oil giant BP said the weather had “severely impacted” its deliveries to more than 100 petrol stations across Scotland and that it would only carry out safe and essential deliveries from its Grangemouth terminal near Edinburgh.
Police in the southern countries of Kent and Surrey advised motorists not to travel unless their journey was absolutely essential, with severe delays reported on the M25 London orbital motorway which passes through the counties.
Britain, which last year shivered through its coldest winter in 30 years, has not seen such widespread early snowfall since 1993.
Heavy snowfall also forced the closure of Geneva International Airport where 100 stranded passengers had to spend the night in the terminal. Two hundred others were sheltered by the civil protection unit as hotels were fully booked.
Switzerland’s Basel Airport shut its runway in order to clear off the 10cms of snow that accumulated in just over two hours. The country’s biggest airport Zurich was still operating, although 70 flights had been cancelled due to bad weather conditions in other airports.
At Germany’s Frankfurt airport, Europe’s third busiest, 153 flights were cancelled, all due to flights not arriving from elsewhere.
And 250 flights were cancelled at Munich airport, nearly a quarter of the daily total, mostly due to snow preventing take-offs.
In the Paris area, French aviation authorities asked airlines to cancel 25 per cent of their flights at Roissy airport and 10 per cent at Orly because of expected snowfalls. But there were no flight cancellations Wednesday
Snow and freezing temperatures however forced authorities to cancel 116 flights from Lyon Airport.
Trains were also hit, including the Eurostar, which operates high-speed passenger trains linking London with Paris and Brussels. Speed restrictions were imposed and led to delays of up to 90 minutes and some cancellations.
There were widespread problems on the roads across Europe, including in France where 17,200 trucks had to abandon their journeys nationwide.
There were serious accidents reported on the main road between Prague and the eastern Czech city of Brno.
In Italy snowfalls disrupted traffic in city centres and on motorways in the northern Lombardy and Piedmont regions, and in Spain school transport services were disrupted by heavy snow in northern and central regions.
Snowdrifts and fallen trees also caused traffic problems in Germany.
Bild newspaper said it was the coldest December 1 in several hundred years, with temperatures as low as minus 18C in some places.
Eight people have died of exposure in Poland, three in the Czech Republic and two in Lithuania, officials said on Wednesday.
In Italy two ancient Roman walls fell down in the archaeological site of Pompeii due to persistent heavy rains that wore away the ancient mortar between the stones.
With all this bad weather, why not get on a plane to the warmth of Tenerife and the Canarian sun?
