It’s cold across Europe. Freezing!
Tuesday January 13, 2009 - Email this article to a friend

The cold spell, caused by cold arctic weather coming in from the north, has also left snow on the beaches of the Mediterranean.  Schools around Marseilles were shut and the city was thrown into chaos. Today (Saturday) Madrid's main airport has been severly disrupted by the weather with 2 of its 4 runways closed for large parts of the day.

In Italy a man died when snow slid off a roof and buried him.  Meanwhile several people have died of cold in Eastern Europe as Russia had stopped supplying gas in a dispute about supply and pricing between Russia and Ukraine. In Poland at least 8 people have died from hypothermia.

The weather is taking its toll across large parts of Europe.  Take a look at this BBC video.

Power lines downThe cold spell has led to power cuts as cables freeze up and the supply of power is disrupted.

Up in the Alps it’s pretty cold too and we’ve had the lowest recorded temperatures so far this winter.  The sky has been clear so temperatures have remained cold.

In  Zermatt it’s -9˚c while over in  Espace Killy it’s -8˚c.

It's cold in the valleyHowever, it has actually been colder in some places down in the valley than up in the mountains.  This is caused by what is called an inversion and you can see its impact in the picture on the right we took in the Val de Bagnes this week.

The temperature at the bottom is colder than up above it and so the hot air traps the colder air beneath it and it remains cold.

It often happens at this time of year with the valleys receiving little or no sun as it remains low in the sky and the high mountains cast a shadow over the valley floor.

Sometimes this can go on for days or even weeks. 

When we were in Utah for the 2002 Winter Olympics it was often colder in Salt Lake City at 1,288m than in the nearby ski resort of Alta at 2,600m.

The cold weather though, has helped the police in England solve a crime. Earlier this week a house was broken into in SE England and the police followed footprints in the snow of the likely suspects and caught the teenage burglars red-handed with what they had just stolen.

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