Paris (France) (AFP) – Freezing temperatures plunged swathes of Europe into a second day of travel chaos on Tuesday, with six people dying in weather-related accidents during the continent’s bitterest cold snap this winter so far.

Since the mercury dropped on Monday, five people have died in France and one woman in Bosnia as heavy snow and rain sparked floods and power outages across the Balkans.

Paris’s two main airports, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly, were to cancel many flights early Wednesday to allow ground crews to clear snow from runways and de-ice planes.

Forty percent of morning flights at Charles de Gaulle were to be scrapped, and 25 percent at Orly.

In Britain, temperatures plunged to -12.5C overnight Monday-Tuesday in Norfolk, eastern England, while temperatures below -10C across the Netherlands brought trains to a standstill on Tuesday morning.

“Last night was the coldest night of the winter so far,” Britain’s Met Office said, with nearly all of the United Kingdom on alert for snow and ice and more snowfall expected.

With the chill making roads perilous, three people died in accidents linked to black ice in southwestern France on Monday morning, authorities said, while a taxi driver died in hospital on Monday night after his vehicle veered off the road and plunged into the Marne river in the Paris region.

His passenger was still being treated for hypothermia, according to a police source. Another driver died east of Paris on Monday after colliding with a heavy goods vehicle.

Melanie Coligneaux, a pastry chef, said that she left her home in Beny-Bocage in northwestern France at 5:00 am (0400 GMT) to avoid the worst of the snow-day traffic.

“The roads are bad, so we don’t want to damage the car or even have an accident,” the 30-year-old told AFP.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the Netherlands’ main flight hub, meanwhile saw a second day of weather-driven cancellations Tuesday, with at least 600 flights grounded and travellers facing huge queues at the airline counters.

Dutch airline KLM, which is responsible for removing ice from most aircraft at Schiphol, warned that it had nearly run out of de-icing fluid, blaming the “extreme” weather conditions and supply delays.

Trains from the Dutch national railway operator NS only began rolling again after 10:00 am (0900 GMT), with services limited afterwards.

But planes got off the ground again from Liverpool in northwest England and Aberdeen in northeast Scotland, after the cold had forced both airports to close on Monday.

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