Weather chaos continues across Europe

Up to 28 people are thought to have been killed by the cold and weather related accidents across Northern Europe and thousands of people have been left stranded following disruption of road and railway networks and closure of airports.

Flooding in the Balkans has forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate their homes while temperatures in Poland have fallen as low as -33C in the past few days.

Thousands of railway passengers in Germany had to spend the night in their trains after snow forced high speed inter-city routes to be halted. Underground stations, soup kitchens and heated bus shelters have been left open all night to shelter homeless people from the extreme weather conditions.

International travel has been disrupted as a number of international airports have been forced to close including London Heathrow and Gatwick, Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol, Berlin Tegel and Duesseldorf airports.

Cold air moving down from Siberia has pushed temperatures down by 5 – 10 degrees below average in some major cities across Europe.

Meanwhile Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro have experienced severe flooding.