Heavy snowfall and freezing rain disrupted rush-hour traffic across large parts of Germany on Monday morning.
Accidents became more frequent on the roads in the north-east according to reports from German states of Saxony, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Rail operator Deutsche Bahn said that delays and cancellations were to be expected on long-distance services. This applies to the whole of southern Germany as well as connections to and from Berlin, Hamburg and Hanover, Deutsche Bahn said.
In Berlin, tram services had to be cancelled due to icy overhead power lines, and public transport services were restricted elsewhere in the capital.
The snow front reached south-western Germany on Sunday evening, where some areas saw up to 25 centimetres of fresh snow.
Early on Monday, parts of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg were still under severe weather warnings from the German Weather Service due to the risk of black ice. Parts of northern Bavaria were under severe weather warnings due to snowfall.
Near Weinsberg in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, 15 to 20 cars and lorries got stuck in the snow on a road connecting two motorways during the night, according to police.
Near Nuremberg, a man skidded in his car on an icy road and ended up in the front garden of a church, crashing into the steps of the building. Rescue workers took the 34-year-old driver to hospital with minor injuries.
The weather is not set to improve for the time being. The weather service expects further snowfall in many parts of Germany during the course of the day, which will then gradually ease, and further frosty weather.
Meanwhile, the CNN reports that brutal, deadly cold sets in with more than 800,000 still without power from winter storm in the United States, as 18 states see snow pile up to a foot or more.
With the US at just over 811,000 power outages on Monday morning, power restoration crews are gearing up for a “prolonged” period of getting the lights back on, according to statements from several electrical utilities.
Southern states in the United States have been hit the hardest, with ice wreaking havoc on trees and power lines, according to the CNN. Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas have the most outages as of Monday morning, according to tracker PowerOutage.us:
• Tennessee: 250,536
• Mississippi: 160,987
• Louisiana: 127,635
• Texas: 62,449
“It will be a prolonged restoration period,” said Mississippi-based North East Power’s CEO Keith Hayward in a video statement on X Sunday night. Hayward described the damage ice had done to trees in several counties as “devastating” and said crews were working toward getting electrical substations running in addition to fixing poles.
Electric utility Entergy said it has over 143,000 customer outages in its service area, with the bulk in Louisiana and Mississippi. Entergy said it had thousands of crew members out on Monday restoring power.
In Texas, the Deep East Texas Electric Cooperative had reported 16,000 customers without power as of 6:30pm local time on Sunday, a CNN report indicated.
Tracking snowfall across the US.
Here are the latest snowfall reports sent to the National Weather Service by trained spotters.
Source: National Weather Service
Graphic: John Keefe, CNN.
Snow is still falling in parts of New England and New York, but snow totals across most of the US are mostly wrapped up. At least a foot of snow has fallen in 18 states, and the top snowfall total so far is 31 inches in New Mexico, according to NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center.
