- More than 400 flights were canceled at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam
- At Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, half of Wednesday morning’s flights were called off ahead of time
- French media reported five deaths in road traffic accidents linked to the weather
- Domestic trains in the Netherlands faced additional suspensions because of an IT outage
- Much of Germany was snow-laden but disruptions were comparatively minimal, apart from some road traffic accidents and the ongoing arson-induced power outages in Berlin
- Schools in Scotland closed for a second consecutive day after sub-zero overnight temperatures in much of the UK
- Snow even fell in central Madrid as the royals attended a military parade celebrating a 1782 victory against Britain
Netherlands
More than 400 flights were canceled at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport on Tuesday, already hit by several days of major disruptions with the Netherlands among the worst affected by recent snowfalls in Europe.
“We haven’t experienced such extreme weather conditions in years,” a spokesperson for the Dutch KLM arm of Air France-KLM, Anoesjka Aspeslagh, told Reuters.
Early on Tuesday, all domestic rail services were suspended in the Netherlands, because of an IT outage exacerbating the problems like frozen points already caused by the adverse weather.
This further compounded existing travel difficulties by air and on the roads, particularly in the busy area around Amsterdam, where problems persisted for longer than in the rest of the country.
France
High-speed Eurostar trains from Amsterdam to Paris, bound eventually for the UK, were either canceled or running late.
Paris’ two main airports, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly, were both planning to cancel many flights early on Wednesday. This was to allow ground crews time to clear snow from runways and de-ice planes, hopefully ensuring smoother services going forward. Warmer temperatures are forecast starting on Wednesday, meaning the clearance work might last.
The French capital remained caked in a layer of snow after a fairly heavy snowfall on Monday evening, including for the Ukraine Coalition of the Willing summit hosted by President Emmanuel Macron.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot urged people to travel as little as possible on the roads and to work from home, with domestic media reporting five traffic accident deaths in crashes linked to the weather.
Germany
Snows affected almost every corner of the country on Tuesday, from Berlin in the east to Bonn in the west and from Hamburg to the north to Stuttgart down south.
In Berlin, several thousand households and around 1,000 businesses in the southwest of the city were still without heating and electricity after a sabotage attack on power cables over the weekend.
There were accidents on highways and roads in the poor weather, and some delays to trains and planes, but disruption was comparatively minimal compared to several nearby countries.
UK
Schools were shut for a second day in much of Scotland, which had faced some of the heavier snows across the UK in recent days.
The UK Meteorological Office said winter hazards would continue throughout the week for most of the country. Canals in the capital London were frozen over.
Marham, in Norfolk in southeast England, clocked overnight lows of -12.5 degrees Celsius (9.5 Fahrenheit) heading into Tuesday, the lowest anywhere in the UK to date this winter.
