Snow snarls traffic, strands thousands in southern Europe
Posted: 10 March 2010 0438 hrs

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BARCELONA, Spain: Heavy snow on Tuesday stranded thousands of road travellers on the French-Spanish border, blanketed Italian cities and left 10,000 homes in Corsica without power.

A freak snowstorm dumped more than a metre of snow on the Pyrenees mountains, stranding more than 6,000 travellers on Tuesday and blocking some 40 roads between France and Spain.

Cross-border traffic was halted, leaving a tailback of 1,750 trucks on the French flank of the mountains, parts of which suffered last week when the area was battered by hurricane-force winds and heavy rain.

Barcelona on Monday saw its heaviest snowfall since 1962, triggering emergency measures, with weather-related problems reported across the region.

Northeastern Spain came to a frozen standstill late Monday. Flights were cancelled, schools closed and the entire Barcelona region saw major disruption to road and rail transport.

In the Girona region, Spanish energy company Fecsa-Endesa said 200,000 households were without electricity, while snowfalls of up to 50 centimetres saw schools closed on Tuesday for 165,960 pupils.

In the Aude region of southern France, firefighters and local authority workers brought hot food and drink to 1,800 passengers stuck on trains, and 550 retirees and school children on bus tours to Spain.

"In Perpignan, passengers were able to bed down on a sleeper train, but we spent the night sitting up and didn't even get blankets until 3:00 am," complained Jean-Marc Rossignol, escorting his 75- and a 82-year-old parents to Toulouse.

The main A9 motorway was blocked by snow, with hundreds of travellers seeking temporary shelter in municipal buildings along the route, before it was reopened late morning.

In Corsica where authorities announced a weather alert until Thursday, falling trees cut power lines leaving 10,000 homes without electricity, mostly in the northern part of the French island.

The icy weather also extended to Italy, where a rare snowfall surprised central and northern regions on Tuesday, blanketing the tourist meccas of Pisa, Siena and Assisi and snarling traffic in Viterbo, north of Rome.

Snow closed schools on the island of Elba and in the Umbria region, while in Sicily a landslide disrupted rail travel.

Mountain areas of southern Calabria meanwhile accumulated 40 centimetres of snow overnight, media reports said, while the northwestern Piedmont region reported below-freezing temperatures and a high risk of avalanches.

Meanwhile, high winds lashed coastal areas.

Italian public safety officials met on Tuesday with rescue workers, police and officials from rail and motorway companies to prepare for weather that is expected to worsen on Wednesday. - AFP/de