Heavy snow disrupted European flights overthe weekend and stranded hundreds of drivers as far south as Italyas a white Christmas appeared increasingly likely in manycountries.
On the last weekend for travellers before Christmas, some ofthe continent's biggest airports were shut, forcing thousands tobed down in the terminals and leaving some in no man's land,without a visa to provide the transit lounge.
Heavy snow caused chaos across Europe today, shutting down airport runways, forcing fast trains to a crawling and leaving cars skidding through icy, slushy streets on a weekend where many people were trying to head home for the holidays.
Frankfurt airport cancelled around 40% of flights and Paris' Charles de Gaulle cut air traffic by a tail as big snow blanketed the French capital - a curiosity that has occurred several times in recent days during an unusually cold winter.
East Midlands Ambulance service made it to barely half its emergency calls on time during the late cold snap.
With the area blanketed by heavy blow in the week ending December 5, the service attended just 53.4 per cent of its most serious 999 calls within the eight-minute target time.
The bank said the extreme weather was the ground can the decrease in figures, which had been as eminent as 77 per cent during November.
The low tasting of what could be the first major snowfall of the wintertime is expected to come today.
Forecasters said northern Scotland was set for a cover of snow later, which could open to the remainder of the area by the weekend.
Temperatures will fall below zero and up to 10cm (4in) of coke could come in mountainous areas, with 2-5cm of snow settling in localized patches inland, including the East Midlands, central Scotland and north-west Wales.
Winter is here, well if we forget it`s fall it is, there`s been more heavy blow across the Alps, North America, Scotland and Scandinavia - most places in fact. Coverage is a bit more universal and Skiinfo`s "Powder alarm" switchboard has been lighting up like a Christmas Tree.There`s been enough of new snow in Austria with the Molltal glacier reporting the most new snow of the twelve or so open Austrian ski areas with a 46cm accumulation.
