Europe shivered under a snowy pre-Christmas cold snap on Friday that closed airports, caused chaos on the roads and gave some school kids an early start to their holidays.
The Swiss canton of Grisons recorded a record low temperature of minus 32 degrees Celsius (minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, and early snow was seen across the continent from the white cliffs of Dover to the Black Sea.
Two of London’s airports were closed overnight after heavy snow fell across south and east England, with a score of incoming flights being diverted to other British destinations.
Gatwick and Luton airports were later able to reopen after workers cleared snow from their runways, but forecasters warned of a repeat of the bad weather over the weekend.
More than 1,500 British schools closed early on the last day of term, giving some 500,000 pupils an early start to their Christmas holidays, as between five and 15 centimetres of snow fell in some areas.
Meanwhile, some 3,000 homes in northwest England were left without power.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, eastern England, where she arrived on Wednesday for the annual Christmas celebrations with the rest of the royal family, was also hit by heavy snowfall.
Hundreds of drivers had to spend the night in their cars in Kent in southeast England, while police in neighbouring Essex reported 180 accidents.
Romania was also hit by a thick blanket of snow that caused major transport problems and led to power blackouts in some areas of the southeastern European country.
Most flights from Bucharest airport were delayed, some by as much as two and a half hours, and many train services from the capital were cancelled.
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no rain or snow in iran without water we going to die
We were also hit with a pretty big snow storm here in the mid-Atlantic and North Eastern states of the U.S.
:) Darn that Global Warming! I think the wind turbines are causing the earth to spin on a new axis! Europe may become the new Greenland! We may want to learn more about this green movement!