And more chaos on Europe's airports and roads. New waves of cold and heavy snow are hitting the entire continent
Cars in busy morning traffic in Antwerp, Belgium on January 6, 2026. PHOTO: Dirk Waem / Zuma Press / Profimedia
In the coming days, more flights will be canceled, trains will continue to run late and roads will be blocked by snow across Europe, amid a new cold wave that is expected to worsen the situation, bringing more heavy snow after several days of disruption to transport on the continent, writes Reuters on Tuesday.
Authorities in the Netherlands advised the population to stay at home on Wednesday if possible, as another blizzard is expected overnight.
French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said on Tuesday that airlines had already been ordered to cancel at least 40 percent of flights from Paris' main Charles de Gaulle airport the following morning and a quarter of flights from the smaller Orly airport.
Public transport in the Paris region will also likely be affected by the snow, he added.
At Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, where more than 400 flights were canceled on Tuesday, authorities advised travelers whose flights were canceled or rescheduled for other days not to report to the airport to avoid congestion.
“We haven't experienced weather conditions this extreme for years,” said Anoesjka Aspeslagh, a spokeswoman for Dutch airline KLM, as wintry weather paralyzed traffic at one of Europe's main transit hubs for a fifth straight day.
Birthday, in transit
Stuck at Schiphol, Simiao Sun said she feared she would spend her 40th birthday in transit. He was told he would have to wait three days for a rescheduled flight to Beijing.
“My child would be missing school and we would both be missing work, so I'm standing in line here … hoping to catch a flight a little earlier,” the woman said.
KLM said it was offering alternative flights where possible and doing everything it could to help travelers, but was “overwhelmed by requests”.
In addition, all domestic rail services in the Netherlands were suspended on Tuesday morning after an IT system failure affected the rail network. Trains started running in some parts of the country after 9:00 GMT, but problems persisted around Amsterdam, with high-speed Eurostar services from Amsterdam to Paris either canceled or delayed.
Roads in France gradually cleared on Tuesday after snow caused serious accidents across the country, killing at least five people, according to news station BFMTV. The traffic in the Paris area reached a record of 1,000 kilometers of traffic jams on Monday night.
Germany, under the snow
In Germany, temperatures fell well below minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) in the south and east on Tuesday morning. Much of the country was covered in snow.
Great Britain, the Met Office has announced that the dangerous weather phenomena specific to the winter season could continue throughout the week in most of the country. Temperatures overnight on Monday fell to -12.5C in Marham, Norfolk, east England, marking the coldest night of the winter so far.
Heavy snow and rain also wreaked havoc in the Western Balkans, closing roads, cutting power and flooding rivers. A woman died in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo on Monday after a snow-laden tree fell on her.
