Firstly in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where flights had to be interrupted for a while this Sunday January 5 in the morning. Just like in the United Kingdom, where heavy snowfall caused significant disruption to transport in England, with Manchester and Liverpool airports having to close their runways. Several centimeters of snow fell in England and Wales overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam had to close its runways for a while due to heavy snowfall
NICKELAS KOK / AFP
Manchester Airport (northern England) indicated on X shortly after 7 a.m. (GMT and local) that the runways remained closed. “Operations will resume as quickly as possible,” the airport said, advising passengers to contact their airline.
Snow also affects traffic on the roads. Operator National Highways said several roads in northern England were closed overnight. In Hampshire (southern England), part of the northbound motorway was closed on Sunday morning due to flooding due to snow that fell overnight, National Highways said. This operator warns that several roads could now freeze.
At Liverpool airport (north), “the teams are working hard to clear the runway”, which is also closed. Traffic, however, resumed at Birmingham and Bristol airports, where the runways had been closed overnight.
OLI SCARFF / AFP
In the north of England.
At least one train line, in the Leeds region (north), has been closed. Power was also cut to several homes across England and Wales. The situation is expected to improve during the day on Sunday in several regions of England, according to the Met Office.
In Germany
Same situation across the Rhine, where several German airports have also disrupted their schedules due to snowfall and freezing rain, with more than a hundred flights canceled. 120 takeoffs and landings were canceled out of around 1,090 scheduled for Sunday at Frankfurt, Germany’s largest airport in the west of the country.
“Take-off and landing runways must be cleared” and “de-icing aircraft is also more complex and more demanding,” said a spokesperson. Poor visibility in the sky also disrupts air traffic.
In Munich (south), 35 flights were canceled as a precaution on Saturday evening, out of a total of 750 scheduled departures and landings at Germany’s second largest airport, according to a spokesperson. The disruptions even began on Friday evening at Berlin-Brandenburg airport, with 30 flights disrupted, including 17 canceled due to icy conditions in the capital.
The German weather office warned of freezing rain on Sunday after snowfall overnight, and recommended avoiding unnecessary travel.
Snowstorm in the United States
Finally in the United States, a dangerous winter storm hit this Sunday, where millions of people in the eastern half of the country are threatened by blizzards and some localities will record the heaviest snowfall in the last ten years, predict the meteorologists.
More than 60 million people are in the path of the storm, which is expected to sweep the eastern half of the United States with arctic air until Monday and cause severe travel disruptions, particularly air travel.
The National Weather Service (NWS) has warned of the risk of ice, snow and strong winds from western Kansas to the coastal states of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, a swath of territory 2,400 kilometers wide . “A disruptive winter storm will affect the Central Plains through the Mid-Atlantic through Monday, with widespread heavy snow and ice accumulations,” the NWS said in its latest bulletin.
