Arctic Weather Disrupts Power and Transport Across Europe

Snow and ice are disrupting transport and straining power grids, after the first major storms of the winter season hit northern Europe.

Northern France is under a orange weather warning, after Storm Caetano left as much as 20 centimeters (8 inches) of snow in its wake. Hundreds of motorists were stuck on highways around Paris, which had the most November snow since 1968. About 10% of flights at Charles de Gaulle Airport have been canceled since Thursday, as runways were cleared of snow and planes de-iced.

France’s Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said 70,000 of the 270,000 homes that suffered power outages have been reconnected, with plans to restore electricity to the rest by the end of the weekend.

The storm also passed over Switzerland, where several November snowfall records were broken including in Lucerne, where 42 centimeters fell in 24 hours, beating the previous all-time high set 105 years ago. On Friday, temperatures in the Swiss Alps will be -12C at 2,000 meters.

The icy weather helped push benchmark European gas toward €50 a megawatt-hour for the first time in a year, before they declined as Russia said it will find ways to continue accepting payments from foreign buyers despite US sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank. Inventory withdrawals could leave the market more vulnerable in late winter.

About 6,600 homes are still without electricity in Finland in the wake of the blizzard dubbed Jari, though the majority of outages have been resolved. Road conditions will remain poor across the Nordic country on Friday, with sub-zero temperatures and occasional snowfall.

Orange and yellow snow warnings are still in place along Sweden’s east coast, while a yellow alert covers most of the south. Thousands are still without power in the north, including 3,000 people in the town of Skelleftea. Temperatures dipped below -10C (14F) overnight.

“It might be very difficult to get through on the roads because of the amount of snow, accidents or stationary vehicles,” meteorologist Christopher Greenland wrote on the website of national forecaster SMHI. “Even rescue services may struggle.”

There are yellow warnings for snow and ice across large parts of the UK on Friday. Storm Bert will bring heavy snow over the Scottish mountains on Saturday, triggering an amber alert.