NORTHERN GERMANY was losing the battle against the winter weather last night as record snowfall brought the Baltic coast and northeastern state of Mecklenburg to a standstill .
More than 30cm (12in) of snow fell on the northern half of the country on Saturday night, rising to over 1m near the coast. The snowfall left 120 motorists stranded in their cars after two-metre high snowdrifts prevented them opening their car doors.
Dykes in two Baltic Sea resorts have reached bursting point and were reinforced with sandbags, though some coastal towns like Travemünde have already reported flooding.
With many rural villages near the Polish border already cut off, further snow was forecast for last night, accompanied by chilly winds of more than 120 km/h.
Mecklenburg authorities have declared a state of emergency with police pleading with motorists to avoid driving wherever possible.
“The snow chaos has trumped us here. The snow-clearing and emergency services are completely overwhelmed,” said a spokesman for the northeastern city of Greifswald.
Meteorologists predicted an easing of the extreme weather today as blizzards caused by depression “Daisy” ease.
Hundreds of incidents, two fatal, were reported in Germany while in neighbouring Holland three young men died when their car skidded on ice and hit a tree.
Another Dutchman was killed by an avalanche in the Italian Alps while across the border in the Swiss Alps five Russian men were killed in another avalanche.
Nearly 230 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt airport, as were a quarter of all flights at Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Over 800 passengers spent the night stranded at Lyon airport.
Fallen power lines plunged 200,000 Polish and 100,000 Dutch households into darkness. A shopping centre in the western city of Leszno was evacuated after its snow-covered roof began to give way.
Flooding hit Italy and Spain, with the heaviest snowfall on the Galician coast in 25 years; it even snowed on Mallorca.
All the snow made Berliners a little crazier than usual at the weekend. No less than two massive snowball fights – organised over the internet – took place at opposite ends of the city.
Some 4,000 Berliners turned up on the man-made Teufelsberg or “Devil’s Mountain” on the western edge of the city while some 2,000 residents of rival neighbourhoods Kreuzberg and Neukölln faced off in Görlitzer Park, in the city’s southeast.
While Berliners pelted each other with snowballs, a dozen members of the Pirate Party braved sub-zero temperatures, stripped to their underwear and marched through the arrivals – all in protest against the new body scanners German authorities are proposing to introduce at airports.
Scribbled across their bare chests they posed a question to puzzled passengers: “Got something to hide?”