Winter havoc
January 11, 2010
Germans headed back to work on Monday after a weekend of snow and icy temperatures took their toll.
Heavy snowfall trapped more than 160 people in their cars on a highway in the northeast of the country on Sunday. The drivers had to run their engines to stay warm until police were able to free them.
The situation in the north of the country was described as "dramatic" by the German Automobile Association, with motorists stranded for hours on the A20 motorway. Traffic was flowing along one carriageway of the road by Monday morning.
Traffic on the A5 freeway between Germany and France was also backed up for several hours due to the snow. The whole country was blanketed with snow and buffeted by gale force winds in places. Leipzig in the east was shivering under 29 centimetres (11 inches), the capital Berlin under 27 cm while Hamburg in the north-west had 12 cm.
Dozens of villages in rural Schleswig-Holstein and on Baltic Sea islands were completely cut off. Villages on the island of Fehmarn remained isolated on Monday morning, with efforts to clear roads planned during the day.
Snowfall also caused many cancellations at airports in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Dusseldorf. At Frankfurt alone, more than 400 people spent the night at the airport, as a result of cancelled flights.
Casualties across the continent
Three men, aged 17-22, died in the Netherlands when their car skidded on ice and hit a tree, it was reported Sunday.
The Czech Republic reported a total of four deaths caused by cars skidding in the icy and snowy conditions over the weekend, two on Saturday and two Sunday.
There were two fatal road accidents in Germany, and as many as four drivers were reported killed in traffic accidents in Belgium.
In Russia, five men died in an avalanche during a mountaineering expedition on Saturday. A Dutch man was also killed by an avalanche in the Italian alps.
Other fatalities included people slipping as they cleared snow, and an elderly Spanish woman who drowned when her village was flooded.
Winter mayhem
In France, about 1,000 people were stranded at Lyon's airport after a number of flights were cancelled or re-routed.
Across the channel in Britain, 50 flights were cancelled from Heathrow, and the Eurostar train to Paris and Brussels cancelled one third of its planned trips. Soccer and rugby matches there have also been called off.
Areas of Poland, France and Italy suffered power outages.
According to meteorologist Michel Daloz with Meteo France, the winter weather is being caused by a rare combination of factors. A warm depression over the north of Italy has combined its warm humid air with cold air coming from the north and east.
rc/mk/AFP/AP/dpa/Reuters
Editor: Toma Tasovac