BRRRR! 2008-2009 is shaping up as perhaps the coldest winter in European memory

Much of Europe seized by severe winter weather

MADRID -- A rare, heavy snowfall in central Spain closed Madrid's airport and paralyzed traffic in the city and several German rivers were frozen over as much of Europe remained in the grip of Siberian conditions Friday.

The bitter cold which has embraced the much of the continent since the end of last year comes amid Russian gas cuts to several European countries.

... All four runways at Madrid's Barajas airport, Europe's fourth busiest, were closed because of the snowfall and low visibility...

Up to 10 centimeters (four inches) of snow accumulated in Madrid as temperatures in the region dropped as low as minus 6 C (21 F).

The regional government of Madrid set up a “crisis cabinet” to deal with the effects of the heavy snowfall, which also hit the region of Castilla-la-Mancha southeast of the capital as well as western Spain.

The northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela, a destination for thousands of pilgrims, recorded the heaviest snowfall in recent memory on Friday, according to the online edition of daily newspaper El Mundo.

Across the border in France, air, rail and road traffic began to return to normal in the region around the southern port of Marseille after two days of disruptions caused by heavy snow, which had paralyzed the city on Thursday.

However, around 1,000 homes remained without electricity.

In Germany, the death toll from the cold snap rose to three and several rivers were frozen over, blocking ship traffic, authorities said. Drift ice covered 80 to 90 percent of the surface of the river Elbe from Doemnitz to the Germany's main port of Hamburg in the north, a spokeswoman for the Water and Shipping Office said.

Some barges had to be freed late Thursday with industrial ice breakers.

Germany is experiencing one of its coldest winters of the past 100 years, with the mercury dropping as low as minus 34.6 C (minus 30.3 F) in the mountains in the south.

One person also died from the cold in Poland during the night, bringing the death toll in the country to 83 since November 1, most of them homeless people.

... In Portugal, four people died in a fire apparently caused by a faulty heater in an apartment building in the city of Porto. Temperatures that reached as low as minus 6 C (21 F) caused authorities in several Portuguese cities to issue tents to homeless. In the north of the country, the snow Friday cut several main roads.

CO2 IS CONSTANTY INCREASING, BUT TEMPERATURES ARE NOT; THEREFORE: AGW = BS.

• "MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING" IS A HOAX COOKED UP BY THE LEFT:
• CO2 TAXES, SWAPS ETC ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LEFTIST SCHEME TO FULFILL THEIR LONG-HELD DREAM OF GIVING THE GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FREE MARKET.

DON'T BE FOOLED.

CNN video of Madrid's snow HERE.

MORE RECENT NEWS ON EUROPE'S COLDEST WINTER: 1/7/09: 8 freeze to death during the coldest night this winter:

A cold wave claimed seven more lives in Poland and one casualty in Belgium as temperatures across Europe plunged below freezing overnight in what weather officials Wednesday dubbed the coldest night of winter.
... Temperatures in Poland dropped as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit).

... Milan's two airports Malpensa and Linate, as well as the airports in Turin and Bergamo, were closed all morning after snow reached up to 30 centimetres (one foot).

The French weather service called it "the coldest night of winter" so far with temperatures ranging for minus nine degrees Celsius in Paris -- the coldest since 1997 -- and minus 20 degrees Celsius in the northern Ardennes region.

... The coldest place was Dippoldiswalde-Reinberg near Dresden in the east where the mercury plunged to minus 27.7 degrees Celsius (minus four degrees Fahrenheit) during the night.

"Temperatures like this suggest that in certain places in the region the lowpoint must have been under the minus 30 mark," the German weather office said in a statement.

... The freezing weather is expected to last through the week due to a stable mass of cold air coming from Scandanavia and Siberia, the French weather service said.

IOW: AGW = BS!