France is preparing to face the coldest winter in almost a century. In Denmark, hundreds of people took advantage of the snow to go skiing.
This week, temperatures are expected to drop to -10 degrees in France. Météo France has placed ten departments on orange alert, including Eure, Essonne, Isère, Manche, Orne, Savoie and Yvelines.
The black ice has already caused extensive damage to the roads in Île de France and Normandy. In Caen, in Calvados, public transport has been suspended and traffic is difficult.
While some are stuck on the roads, others are taking advantage of this record snowfall. In the Zeeland region, in northern Denmark, residents have taken advantage of their cross-country skiing and transformed these plains usually used as golf courses into hiking trails.
Lars Wachmann, forester at the Danish Nature Agency Himmerland, comments: “Now we have good equipment and we have a lot of people in the forest, which we didn’t have before. There weren’t as many as now, so it’s not unusual than a thousand people come here on a weekend when it’s busy.”
Despite the many complications, this cold snap is also the source of magnificent landscapes, such as this sunset above the roofs of Prague, with the smoke escaping from dozens of chimneys.
