Thursday, February 09, 2012
The worst February cold spell Europe has seen in decades may last until the end of the month, leading meteorologists said, raising the prospect of further deaths and an extended spike in European spot gas prices.
"We do have higher confidence in a change by mid-February, but not to milder weather," Leon Brown, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel said. "February will probably remain a cold month right to the end."
The cold and heavy snowfall has killed more than 400 people across Europe. The temperature in some eastern countries has plummeted to -40°C.
Ukraine remained the worst-affected country, with hundreds of cars stranded on the Crimean peninsula and at least 131 deaths so far attributed to the cold.
More than 130 villages remained without electricity in Bulgaria and the army was delivering food and medicines, the Bulgarian defence ministry said.
Bulgaria declared a day of mourning for eight people who died after melting snow caused a dam to burst, flooding an entire village. Two people are missing.
The EU’s crisis response chief Kristalina Georgieva said the worst of the flooding was yet to come.
In Bosnia, authorities reported five more deaths from the cold and snow, taking the total to 13.
In Serbia, where 13 people have died and 70,000 are cut off by snow, authorities urged people to remove icicles from roofs after a woman in Belgrade was killed by falling ice.
An energy official in Serbia said that while demand for electricity had soared, ice was hampering production in some hydropower plants and coal trains were struggling to run.
Cold polar air from northern Russia flanking an area of high pressure has prevented warmer weather from moving in across the Atlantic over Europe, plunging a swathe of the continent into sub-zero temperatures for the past 10 days.
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