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Sacré blanc! Eiffel Tower closes as snow blankets Paris and northern France Sacré blanc! Eiffel Tower closes as snow blankets Paris and northern France
(about 14 hours later)
Traffic chaos in French capital after first real dose of wintry weather hits northern FranceTraffic chaos in French capital after first real dose of wintry weather hits northern France
Agence France-PresseAgence France-Presse
Wed 7 Feb 2018 01.31 GMT Wed 7 Feb 2018 15.15 GMT
First published on Wed 7 Feb 2018 01.31 GMT
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The Eiffel Tower turned away tourists on Tuesday as snow swept across northern France, causing traffic chaos in Paris during the French capital’s first real dose of wintry weather this season. The Eiffel Tower has turned away tourists for the second day in a row as snow swept across northern France, causing transport chaos in Paris during the French capital’s first real dose of wintry weather this season.
The Meteo France weather service put the greater Paris region on alert for snow and black ice on roads, among 27 departments it expected to be on alert across the country until midday Wednesday. Paris’s icy roads were unusually quiet after police urged people to leave their vehicles at home after 12cm of snow fell on the city overnight, with up to 20cm reported in nearby suburbs and rural areas.
The weather caused major gridlock across the city, with more than 700km (430 miles) of traffic jams recorded at 7.30pm local time (1830 GMT) on Tuesday, local information service Sytadin said. Public transport was chaotic, with some tram and commuter rail lines shut down, and almost all bus services halted in the capital.
Paris bus services were cancelled on Tuesday evening, according to the RATP transport authority, and school transport would not run on Wednesday in several areas. Evacuations were under way on Wednesday for at least 900 of the nearly 2,000 people stranded overnight on the N118 highway south-east of Paris, prompting anger from drivers who said the route should have been closed to traffic sooner.
Record 700km of traffic jams around Paris tonight because of the snow & @BFMTV has a reporter on every single road intersection pic.twitter.com/VNX7FJJu2o One driver Antonio De Lemos said he had been “stuck in the snow since 5pm” on Tuesday evening and had spent the night in his car.
Meteo France says the snowfall will intensify overnight Wednesday, with temperatures expected to fall as low as minus 10C (14F), leaving 5-10cm (two to four inches) in most areas on alert. A record 740km (460 miles) of traffic jams were recorded on Tuesday night as the snow began to settle, according to the regional Sytadin traffic authority.
Snow had already dusted Paris on Monday before quickly melting away. Officials opened 46 shelters in the greater Paris region for people stranded by the snow, while about 700 people spent the night at Montparnasse and Austerlitz train stations in Paris.
“This will be the first blast of winter, late but the real thing, with cold air from Scandinavia colliding with a perturbation coming up from the south,” said forecaster Sebastien Leas. Some 230 people had to sleep as best they could at Orly airport south of the capital.
Rail operator SNCF had to slow down trains on several of its high-speed TGV lines, with service disrupted across much of northern France. Flights were disrupted at Orly and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Wednesday morning due to de-icing operations but also because many staff were unable to make it to work.
Thousands of emergency accommodation spaces will be opened to shelter homeless people, the country’s territorial cohesion ministry said. The cold snap marks a sharp contrast from the weeks of mild and rainy weather across northern France in recent weeks, prompting flooding in several areas and pushing the Seine to more than four metres above its normal levels as it flows through the capital.
In the Paris region, traffic was banned for vehicles weighing over 7.5 tonnes, which were told to bypass the area by police, who also advised locals limit road trips.
On Tuesday night in the southern Paris suburb of Essonne, many truck drivers forced to stop on the road were preparing to spend the night.
“We have been stuck since 4.30pm. We are cold, we have no food or toilet. I do not know when I will be able to leave,” one truck driver, Mehdi Benomar, told AFP.
The cold snap marks a sharp contrast from the weeks of mild and rainy weather across northern France in recent weeks, prompting flooding in several areas and pushing the Seine river to more than four metres above its normal levels as it flows through the capital.
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