Heavy snow blanketed Paris yesterday forcing the closure of the Eiffel Tower and briefly shutting its main airport as dipping temperatures turned Scottish roads into deadly ice sheets and Spain and Portugal cleared up after flooding and tornado-like winds.
Road, rail and air travellers faced fresh disruption following last week’s transport shutdown with Paris’s Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport closed for an hour-and-a-half and the mercury plummeting as low as minus 18.3˚C Tyndrum in the Scottish highlands.
In Portugal the high winds carried off cars, uprooted trees, tore off roofs and blew over electricity poles Tuesday, leaving around 30 people injured. A second body was recovered in Spain yesterday following flooding.
Around 100 flights were prevented from taking off or landing at Roissy airport during the temporary closure while workers cleared the runways of the heavy snow that began falling around midday, airport officials said.
One in five flights were earlier cancelled at the request of France’s civil aviation authority (DGAC) due to the poor weather forecast.
Runways at Paris’s second airport Orly were also shut for about half-an-hour for snow to be cleared but there was no immediate information on how flights were affected.
The deluge left all motorways in the Paris region impassable and only a handful of the 350 Paris bus routes were operating. Truckers were ordered to pull off the highways and wait until conditions improved.
The operators of the Eiffel Tower first shut only the first floor of the giant monument that is one of the world’s most visited sites.
“But since late morning the Eiffel Tower has been completely closed and will certainly not reopen today,” said a spokesman.
In Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond said everything possible was being done to keep the country moving.
One of the country’s busiest motorways, the M8, remained partially shut, train services were disrupted and police advised motorists not to drive unless their journey was absolutely essential. Many schools also closed for the day.
Temperatures were expected to stay well below freezing throughout Scotland until today – leaving thick sheets of ice and compacted snow on roads and pavements.
“When ice gets onto motorways, salt doesn’t dissolve the ice underneath minus 10˚C... These are just the realities of exceptional weather conditions,” Mr Salmond said.
Edinburgh council was meanwhile in discussions with the Scottish government and the army about bringing in soldiers to help clear snow from the city’s streets.
Up to 76 centimetres of snow has fallen in parts of the capital and the temperature dropped to minus 14.6˚C.
Hundreds of motorists were earlier in the week left stranded in their cars after they became trapped on snowbound roads in the worst conditions seen since the 1960s.