Snowstorms shut down Ireland, UK calls in army
dublin — Snowstorms shut most of Ireland on Friday and forced Britain to call in the army to help battle some of the worst weather seen for nearly 30 years.
After a blast of Siberian cold dubbed “the beast from the east”, southern Britain and Ireland were battered by Storm Emma that arrived from the south and blocked roads, grounded planes and stopped trains.
Overnight blizzards left snow drifts up to 90cm deep across Ireland and Scotland. The storm knocked out Ireland’s entire public transport network, closing its airports and leaving roads “extremely dangerous”, the government said.
At the peak of the storm, over 100,000 homes and businesses were left without power. On Friday the Irish stock exchange was shut, as were all schools and most government offices as a status Red weather alert remained across most of Ireland. —
paris — Europe’s deep freeze, which has cost some 60 lives over the past week, showed little sign of ending on Friday as a shivering continent awaited a sliver of weekend respite from the chaos wrought by a brutal Siberian weather system.
After heavy snowfall and deadly blizzards lashed Europe across Thursday, conditions marginally improved in some regions — but temperatures generally remained subzero, forcing more major delays on roads, railways and at airports.
Geneva’s busy airport announced it had re-opened shortly after midday “despite the unfavourable meteorological conditions”.
Airport authorities warned, however, of further “delays and cancellations.
In France, 21 departments, mainly in the northwest, remained on alert for snow and black ice as the vicious cold snap maintained its grip.
The cold threw a spanner into the works of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to give a speech on Brexit in the northeastern city of Newcastle.
May elected to stay put in London given the transport mayhem, which saw motorists stuck in their cars around Manchester in the northwest and troops deployed in Hampshire to aid other drivers battling fresh snowfalls and icy gales.
In Ireland, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy tweeted that “blizzard conditions have now passed”, advising people they could now venture outdoors while still exercising “extreme caution”.
Dublin airport remained closed until Saturday in Ireland, where some 24,000 people remained without electricity on Friday morning.
The country battled to get over the worst of a combination of the cold blast and Storm Emma, which has also been battering western Europe and was doing its worst over Britain after moving up from further to the southwest.
Temperatures in London and Dublin remained just below freezing around midday, with Britain’s Meteorological Office forecasting more snow on the way. — AFP