Storms wreak havoc in US, Europe

LONDON/PARIS: Storms wreaked havoc in parts of Europe, the United States and Canada on Tuesday cutting power supplies and causing flight delays.
Disrupted transport networks and power cuts caused havoc in Britain and France, one of the busiest travel and shopping days of the year just before Christmas, after hurricane-force winds and torrential rain lashed the region. A messy storm also downed power lines throughout eastern Canada and from the Midwest to Maine in the US.
Winds of up to 90 mph hit both sides of the Channel, killing at least three people, as heavy downpours caused rivers to flood, traffic bottlenecks, and rail, flight and ferry services to be canceled.
Airports in the south of Britain were disrupted with some flights from Britain's busiest airport, Heathrow, canceled or delayed, while the country's second busiest airport, Gatwick, said that one terminal had been hit by a major power outage.
British train operators also canceled hundreds of services on Tuesday morning, by which time the storm had abated, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded and unable to travel in and out of London.
The weather is expected to be a blow for British retailers, eager to cash in on the traditional pre-Christmas rush.
"Given retailers' hopes that the last couple of days before Christmas would see a final strong surge in sales, the awful weather could not have come at a worse time," IHS analyst Howard Archer said.
Brittany and Normandy were among the regions worst hit in France, where 240,000 homes were deprived of electricity while in southern England, 100,000 homes were cut off from the power grid.
British police said one man, 48, drowned in the Rothay River near Ambleside, Cumbria, in northern England, while a woman's body was found in a river in North Wales.
In France, a teenager was killed and another seriously injured on Monday when a wall in a building site collapsed in Normandy. Naval authorities said a Russian sailor was reported missing after being blown overboard a cargo ship off the coast of Brest.
Energy network groups in both countries said engineers were working to address the damage.
A spokesman for France's SNCF national rail service said there were numerous delays but that no rail lines had been put out of service by the storms so far.
Britain's Environment Agency said flooding was expected to affect much of the country with 250 flood alerts, 80 flood warnings and one severe flood warning in place. Some towns in France's Brittany region faced severe flooding.
Further wet and stormy weather could hit Britain's shores on Friday, warned the country's weather forecasting service, causing more headaches for retailers during "the sales", the usually busy post-Christmas discounting period.
In Canada's largest city, Toronto, just under 200,000 customers were without power Monday following a weekend ice storm that wreaked havoc through Ontario to the Atlantic coast.
Ford said utility workers from Michigan, Manitoba and elsewhere were in Ontario to assist in the efforts to restore power.
At least 11 deaths in the US were blamed on the storm, including five people killed in flooding in Kentucky and a woman who died after a tornado with winds of 130 mph struck in Arkansas. Another woman died in Arkansas when she lost control of her vehicle on an icy patch of an interstate. A Vermont man died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a generator that was running after the storm knocked out power at his house, state police said. Five people were killed in eastern Canada in highway crashes blamed on severe weather conditions.
More than 5,500 flights were behind schedule by Monday evening, the majority of those in New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Dallas and Houston.