Blizzards, icy weather grip parts of Europe

AP, REUTERS
A man with frost on his face runs along the bank of the Neris River as temperatures dipped to -21 degrees Celsius in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Friday. (AP)

BUCHAREST/SOFIA: Blizzards swept parts of eastern Europe on Friday, closing roads and causing traffic accidents, travel delays and leading to medical evacuations.
In Romania, one of the worst affected areas, authorities said main highways in the south and east were made impassable due to the heavy snow. More than 40 trains were not running due to snow on the track.
Senior emergency situations official Raed Arafat said authorities evacuated 622 people who needed dialysis and 126 pregnant women.
In Bulgaria, snowstorms paralyzed traffic and cut electricity to hundreds of thousands of people while forcing atomic energy producer Nuclearelectrica in neighboring Romania to shut down its No. 1 reactor.
Blizzards caused power blackouts in more than 770 Bulgarian towns, authorities said. It also closed parts of the Trakiya motorway in southeastern Bulgaria, all roads in a swathe of the northeast and the main A-2 motorway linking the Romanian capital Bucharest with the Black Sea port of Constanta.
Serbia’s state television reported that 17 people, including six children, were injured in a pileup caused by the wintry weather on the outskirts of the southern city of Nis.
Heavy snow and strong winds disrupted traffic in southern Serbia and snow piled up to two-meters (6.6 feet) high, closing several roads. Local official Dragan Dimitrijevic said emergency crews were “helpless against the wind.”
“New piles form almost immediately after we clear up,” he said.
Temperatures are forecast to drop to minus 20 C (minus 4 F) at the weekend and Bulgarian authorities issued a severe weather warning for 20 out of the country’s 28 regions, telling people to stay indoors.
In Croatia, the temperatures dipped below freezing even along the country’s Adriatic coast where high winds halted some ferry traffic to the islands and over the bridges along the coastline.
In Montenegro, bad weather caused traffic delays and authorities urged people to stay indoors. Villages were virtually cut off in the worst-hit northern part of the country.
Elsewhere, temperatures in Germany plunged as low as minus 25 C (minus 13 F) overnight, after storm “Axel” sucked in icy air from the Arctic.
In northern Europe, which is accustomed to subzero temperatures, it was bitterly cold but sunny, plummeting to minus 23 C on Friday morning in Helsinki, Finland, the same temperature recorded in Latvia. Temperatures were forecast to plunge to minus 25 C in central Romania and minus 20 in Bulgaria.