Nasty weather wreaks havoc in Europe

BRUSSELS: High winds and heavy snow in Europe on Monday stranded thousands of travellers, kept schoolchildren at home and even played havoc with international diplomacy.

It was the second day running of nasty weather across the continent, with Britain still digging out from its deepest snowfall in four years. The snowed-over runways in Brussels on Monday provoked about 90 flight cancellations and some 100 delays, including for the plane carrying Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back home. A scheduled meeting between Netanyahu and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had to be called off because of the weather, officials said. Brussels airport advised passengers to stay away, as staff were trying to de-ice planes and clear snow from the runways.

“Heavy snowfall: do not come to the airport until further notice,” the airport said on Twitter, adding that passengers should check the status of their flights. Schiphol airport, just outside Amsterdam, was forced to cancel 430 flights already by early afternoon — about a third of all flights in or out of one of Europe’s top five busiest air hubs — while many others faced long delays. Eindhoven airport, the Netherlands’ second biggest, said just after midday that “due to wintry weather conditions, the runway is currently closed”. But it was not just knee-high snow that was causing trouble, with winds of up to 150 kilometres per hour (93 miles per hour) forecast along France’s Atlantic Coast. Some 120,000 people were without power in France as storms that caused a ferry to run aground in Calais on Sunday continued to sweep the centre and west of the country.

Brutal winds shut down ferry service between the southern Spanish port of Algeciras and Tangiers in Morocco, while also shuttering some schools in southern Spain. At the same time, Britain was recovering after heavy snow brought freezing temperatures, shutting hundreds of schools and disrupting flights for a second day. Power was restored to more than 100,000 homes, while airports tried to recover their schedules following the winter’s first major snowfall — the biggest in four years.