Northeastern German was particularly hard hit. Wind whipped the snow into yard-high drifts along the Baltic coast, making roads impassable. Radio stations reported that several villages on the Baltic island of Ruegen were completely cut off.
On Fehrmarn, another Baltic island, farmers were being asked to use their farm machinery to help clear the roads, said Volker Kluetmann, an island official.
"The snow is so high that even the snow plows get stuck," Kluetmann said. "It's what you would call a real serious winter — and the winds here are the worst part of it."
In Berlin, even the mice were desperate escape the cold: Swarms of them have taken over the Bundestag, the country's parliament, the daily newspaper Bild reported.
In Britain, cold winds swept in from the north, sending temperatures tumbling to minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Scotland and northern England. The country is in the midst of its longest cold snap in three decades, and transport has been disrupted across the country.
For those wondering how global warming makes colder winters? It actually makes sense.
Wouldn't a warmer Earth mean vineyards in Scotland and Mediterranean beach holidays on the UK South Coast? Rising sea levels, floods, heat-waves, hose-pipe bans and malaria - won't these be the main results of our big gamble with the Earth's climate?
Certainly these are all risks. But they are not the only possible scenario. There is an alternative future of frostier winters, later springs and earlier autumns. This is what we might have to face if global warming shuts down the Atlantic heat conveyor - known to oceanographers and climate scientists as the Atlantic thermohaline circulation or THC, and to the rest of us somewhat inaccurately as the Gulf Stream.
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