CENTRAL EUROPE was braced last night for up to 40cm (16in) of snow as a blizzard caused by Mediterranean storm “Daisy” added to the winter chaos across the continent.
Weather forecasters said there was no end in sight for the cold snap, with temperatures of up to -18 degrees likely.
The coldest recorded temperature in Europe on Thursday night was -41 degrees in the northern Swedish village of Hemavan.
“We’re anticipating severe disruption to traffic on roads, rail and air,” said German weather service DWD. “It won’t be a catastrophe.”
But egged on by reports, Germans stormed their supermarkets early yesterday to greet today’s snow storm with full fridges. “I was very surprised how full the shops were in the afternoon,” said Stefan Balser in a Berlin supermarket. “An old lady told me she was here now because she was afraid to go out tomorrow.”
Flights were cancelled across the continent. In Frankfurt, airport operators laid on 300 extra staff to cope with hundreds of stranded customers.
The army was called out in eastern Poland to create temporary bridges in Burzyska nad Bugiem, after flooding and ice divided the village in two.
The drastic winter weather has claimed nine Polish lives in recent days, bringing to 139 the total since November. Authorities said most of the victims were homeless alcoholics who froze to death.
Some nine Germans have frozen to death, authorities said, despite efforts to bring homeless people into shelters; in Switzerland, avalanches have claimed the lives of seven people.
More than 1,000 Belgians travelling between Brussels and Ghent were left stranded in an icy train on Thursday evening when heavy snow caused overhead electrical cables to collapse.
Similar power line collapses knocked out electricity to 4,000 people in southern England and more than 15,000 people near the southern French city of Arles.
Ice and snow warnings were issued in over a third of France’s 96 Départements yesterday, although traffic began moving again on south-bound motorways to Spain after earlier delays.
Heavy snowfall caused difficulties for motorists in Spain, with several main traffic arteries blocked, in particular mountain routes through the Pyrenees.
It wasn’t just snow causing traffic delays in Germany yesterday: on the A2 Autobahn outside Magdeburg, 25 tonnes of mushy peas slid out of an articulated lorry, carpeting 200m of road in frozen green goodness.