Avalanche by Victoria Graham
We were all talking about skiing holidays this morning in the office – a conversation to cheer us up after our 5am wake-up call. After a slow start to the season the ski conditions have been really quite good so far especially after a heavy fall of snow around the beginning of the year.
I love the snow but recent conditions in Europe have not been favourable with rather too much falling all at once, the result - avalanches. In Graz, Austria, the army were brought in to evacuate hundreds of guests from the alpine resort of Planneralm which had been isolated by avalanches last Thursday. Located around 185km / 115 miles southwest of Vienna helicopters flew in to rescue the stranded and for those choosing to stay electricity generators were brought in by air. Kitzbuhel was also assessed to be at high risk of avalanches after 65cm of snow fell in a short time during this past week. Some resorts in Austria have seen up to a metre or more of snow with the heaviest reported to date in Waidring where over a metre of snow fell in just 1 day!
Elsewhere in Europe blizzards have lashed eastern Romania leaving roads and schools closed. In the county of Constanta on the Black Sea coast traffic came to a standstill as
80km / 50 mile an hour winds whipped up 2 metre piles of snow – that’s around 6.6ft high.
There have also been fresh snowfalls in Kabul, Afghanistan this weekend, the bad weather hampering the search for a missing passenger jet carrying 104 people which went missing in a snow storm last Thursday. It’s hoped the search by air will resume when the weather calms, however the outlook is very changeable over the next few days with more rain, sleet and low temperatures to come.
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