Severe winter weather has brought dangerous conditions and transport disruption to parts of Europe.
In the UK, thousands of schools were closed and travellers have been hit by major delays after heavy snowfall left swathes of the country at a halt. Temperatures as low as -22C (-8F) have left 122 dead in Poland this winter, while in central Norway temperatures plummeted to -41C (-42F) on Wednesday.
In the Swiss Alps avalanches have killed at least seven people. A weather alert has been issued for 14 regions in south-western France that were hit by heavy snow. Extreme or severe weather warnings are still in place across the UK, which is in the grip of its longest cold snap for almost 30 years.
Its hospitals have implemented major incident plans to deal with the extreme weather.On Tuesday up to 20cm (8in) of snow fell in parts of Scotland and northern England, causing travel chaos for millions of people. Another 40cm has been forecast in some areas as the snowfalls spread from north to south.
Gatwick airport was closed on Wednesday morning, while Heathrow, Birmingham, Luton and Southampton were open, but experiencing delays and cancellations. Forecasters at the UK's Met Office said the bitterly cold weather would continue for the next couple of weeks, with further snowfall expected.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on people to "look out for neighbours and relatives in need of assistance". France's regional transport centre said secondary roads in several departments, including Brittany, Cotes d'Armor and Finistere, were almost impassable.
The death toll in Poland has now risen to 122 - most of the dead were reported to have been homeless people. In Burzyska nad Bugiem, in the east of the country, the army has installed makeshift bridges after flooding and ice split the village in two. On Tuesday, Swiss rescue teams found the bodies of three skiers two men and a woman.
They were part of a group caught in an avalanche in the Diemtigtal valley about 40km (25 miles) south of the Swiss capital Bern, on Sunday. The deaths bring to seven the number of people killed in the disaster. In the central Norwegian town of Roeros temperatures plummeted to 41C, the coldest weather in decades.
Officials at the local airport reportedly had to remove frost from the planes manually, as conventional liquid de-icers were ineffective.
But in the Netherlands, hundreds of people embraced the chill, taking part in the traditional skating event held on frozen Henschoter Lake in Utrecht. The Dutch skating federation said on Tuesday that the shallow lake had frozen to a depth of 12cm, making it safe for skating.
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