Ice, snow, woe for Londoners

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By Al Webb

LONDON | A winter storm born in the heart of Russia and sweeping in from continental Europe blanketed Britain in the heaviest snowfall in nearly two decades Monday, nearly paralyzing London and doing what the Nazi Blitz of World War II could never manage bring the capital's buses to a complete halt.

Across the country, some 800 flights were canceled, more than 2,800 schools closed, courts were shut down and motorists sat in traffic jams stretching 50 miles or more as snow piled up.

Then came warnings of ice, which was expected last night to coat everything from beaches to mountains.

London's Heathrow airport, one of the largest and busiest in the world, saw its runways forced into idleness until just before sunset, with the threat of further closures in the night's snows and ice. Passengers with tickets were told not to bother showing up.

In its opening volley, the storm swirled in on fierce, Arctic-style winds targeting London and the populous southeast before dawn and into the morning rush hour Monday.

The Federation of Small Businesses estimated that some 6.4 million people about one-fifth of Britain's total work force never made it to their jobs. Those millions of individual decisions, the FSB estimated, would cost the nation's already credit-crunched economy about $1.7 billion for each day the country remains snowbound.

That could be more days to come. By late Monday afternoon, weather forecasters were predicting the big freeze could last until the weekend, with ice and sleet moving in to add to the winter's treachery.

Not since February 1991 has London and southeast England been hit so badly. During that winter, the heart of the capital was caught in the chill grip of a foot of snow.

By mid-afternoon Monday, this new snowfall was already eight inches deep in the city and predicted by forecaster Thomaz Schafernaker to exceed that by several inches.