Europe is going through a wave of bad weather, mainly with snow and a lot of wind, as Storm Goretti hits the continent’s Atlantic coast this Wednesday (6).
In the Netherlands, the snowfall led to the cancellation of 800 flights scheduled for today at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. It is the sixth consecutive day of disruptions at one of Europe’s busiest airports.
More than a thousand people spent the night in Schiphol, which said it had placed beds in the facilities and offered breakfast to travelers forced to sleep at the airport.
Rail traffic is also severely affected. The Dutch national railway company, NS, advises passengers to postpone their journeys unless absolutely necessary.
Authorities in the Netherlands have asked the population to work from home if possible. At around 5am this Wednesday (Brasília time), the country’s roads recorded more than 700 kilometers of congestion.
According to the Dutch news agency ANP, it has already snowed for longer this year in De Bilt, where meteorological studies are carried out, than in the previous four years combined.
In Brussels, dozens of flights were cancelled. De-icing of runways and aircraft wings is also causing delays.
Furthermore, there are records of Belgian convoys stopped at the Dutch border.
France
A heavy snowfall also fell this morning in Paris, with the French capital’s airports canceling hundreds of flights. Bus services in the French capital were suspended this Wednesday due to snow.
The French territory is under orange warning due to low temperatures. The French meteorological agency Meteo France warned that snowfall is expected to extend across the north of the country this Wednesday.
Authorities banned the circulation of trucks and school buses in around a third of administrative departments, the majority in the northern region.
The French civil aviation authority asked airlines to reduce 40% of flights at Paris’ main international airport, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, and 25% of flights at Orly airport.
For Thursday and Friday, the south of the United Kingdom is expected to be the most affected region in Europe. The British Met Office explained that ice warnings will remain in place in Scotland, but will be lifted later this morning across most of England and Wales.
