Snow again disrupts travel across Europe; 3 die in Italy

LONDON — Hundreds of flights out of London airports were canceled Saturday as fresh snow blocked runways, adding to a continentwide disruption caused by unusually early and heavy snowfalls that now stretch south to most of the Mediterranean coast.

In Italy, at least three people died in snow-related incidents in a space of just 24 hours, news reports said, including a driver whose truck overturned in a highway mass pileup, a man who suffered a heart attack shoveling snow and a homeless man who froze to death. Hundreds of cars were stalled near Florence, Italy, after a jackknifed truck blocked a highway.

In Britain, hundreds of motorists spent the night stranded on a motorway in Lancashire after a similar truck accident. In some parts of northwest England more than about 8 inches of fresh snow had fallen in the past night.

In London, Gatwick airport shut its runway till dusk and British Airways canceled all daytime Saturday flights out of Heathrow Airport while it waited for the latest snowstorm to pass.

Paris was sprinkled with a light coat of snow overnight, as many people prepared to set off on their Christmas vacations. More snow was predicted Saturday, leading civil-aviation authorities to cancel 15 percent of flights at Charles de Gaulle airport between 4 and 11 p.m.

Many flights were also canceled in northeastern France, where snow already blanketed the ground, and services were also canceled at the airports in the cities of Nantes and Rennes.

Frankfurt airport, Germany's biggest, said it was managing to keep its runways clear of ice, but many planes could not take off because airports at several key European destinations, including in Croatia and Pisa in Italy, were shut.

"Our timetables are an utter shambles," said an airport spokesman. By early morning, 100 departures had been canceled. On Friday, 560 of 1,400 scheduled flights had to be scratched. Thousands of travelers were stranded in Frankfurt and had to stay at hotels.

The snow caused most disruption in countries that had only done low-level preparation for a harsh winter.

While Germany was taking the snow in stride, with snow plows keeping roads clear and most transport running normally, a spokesman for the national association of municipalities warned that budgets for snow clearance might be exhausted if there were another heavy blanket of snow.

"We are doing our best, but if you don't have the money to spend, you have to cut back snow plowing," said Gerd Landsberg, chief of the association. "People may just have to get used to driving over hard-packed snow."

The icy weather also swept over large parts of Scandinavia, causing problems particularly in Denmark, where dozens of flights were canceled at the airport in Copenhagen. According to Danish news agency Ritzau, train traffic between Denmark and southern Sweden was also disrupted because of track problems, partly due to the snow, forcing passengers to instead take buses between the two countries.

In Sweden, where media reports suggest the country is experiencing the coldest winter weather this early on in the season since the mid-1800s, several road accidents were reported, with more than 20 in the Stockholm area alone.

Also

Police in Leicester, central England, said the snowy weather had helped uncover a cannabis factory in the city. Officers raided the premises after seeing that snow had melted on the building's roof as a result of heat from industrial-strength lights used in the cultivation of the drug.

Information from The Associated Press was included in this report.