This was never a routine cold snap.
Storm Goretti called Storm Elli in Germany was flagged days in advance as a weather bomb: explosive winds, Arctic air, and cascading secondary hazards. Forecast models were clear. Warnings were issued. Everyone knew what was coming.
And yet, by Saturday, January 10, 2026, large parts of Europe look like the system simply quit.
Not strained.
Not overwhelmed.
Quit.
France Went Dark And Stayed That Way
France didn’t just get hit. It got leveled.
In Barfleur, Normandy, wind gusts reached 213 km/h faster than a Category 4 hurricane.
Roofs peeled away. Cranes twisted. High-voltage transmission lines snapped.
Then the lights went out.
More than 380,000 homes lost power, and as of this afternoon, over 300,000 are still in total blackout during a record-breaking cold snap. No heating. No lighting. No clear restoration timeline.
This is not a software glitch. It is a hard-infrastructure failure.
Two nuclear reactors at Flamanville were forced offline, not because the plants failed, but because the high-voltage lines the veins of the French energy system were torn apart by the wind.
Nuclear. Offline. Because cables snapped like twigs.
In Paris, the RER commuter system has turned into a frozen graveyard of stalled trains. “Disrupted” is the official word. The lived reality is thousands of workers walking home in the dark, through debris, in freezing wind. No buses. No guidance. Just darkness and distance.
The grid didn’t bend. It disappeared.
The Schiphol Shambles: How Europe’s Top Airport Ran Out of Soap
Amsterdam Schiphol is the most humiliating chapter in this story.
Since January 2, more than 3,600 flights have been canceled. Not because runways vanished. Not because aircraft failed. But because the airport ran out of basic de-icing chemicals.
One of the most advanced aviation hubs on Earth effectively ran out of anti-freeze.
On Friday alone, KLM canceled 80 flights, while U.S. passengers including Delta travelers have been stranded for nearly a week. Airlines are now trucking de-icing fluid in from other countries, a desperate, last-ditch fix that exposes how thin the margins really are.
Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly were forced to cut flight schedules by 40% at the peak of Goretti’s winds. Heathrow followed with mass cancellations. Regional UK airports shut down entirely.
Jersey and Guernsey went dark. Birmingham froze.
Across Europe, aviation didn’t slow.
It collapsed.
An estimated 300,000 to 350,000 travelers are now stuck. Airlines are hiding behind the “extraordinary weather” clause to dodge EU261 compensation. Travelers aren’t just stranded; they’ve been abandoned by the companies they paid to protect them.
People Are Dying And Not Quietly
“At least 10 deaths” sounds neat. It isn’t.
In Bavaria, head-on collisions on untreated roads killed multiple people. In Upper Palatinate, a driver lost control on black ice and slammed into a tree. In Albania, floodwaters killed a resident as rivers burst their banks. In Sarajevo, a woman was killed by a falling tree branch while simply walking down the street.
In France, falling debris from storm-damaged buildings struck pedestrians.
These weren’t freak accidents. They were the predictable result of darkness, ice, and systems that failed to protect the people depending on them.
Across the Netherlands and Belgium, roads turned into skating rinks. One traffic jam stretched 700 kilometers. In northern Germany, Deutsche Bahn halted long-distance rail entirely, leaving thousands sleeping in stations like Hamburg. Schools closed. Heating systems strained. Emergency services ran out of slack.
The Cold Has Taken Control
As Goretti’s winds ease in the west, the crisis doesn’t end. It mutates.
Scotland has dropped to -12.5°C, with more than 20 inches of snow in the Highlands. Northern Sweden is enduring -40°C. Germany is bracing for -20°C, Poland for -30°C.
In the Alps, avalanche warnings are at Level 4 across Switzerland and Austria. The A13 motorway is blocked by stranded trucks. Italy has split in two snowbound in the north, battered by violent winds and rain in the south.
Even industry is giving up. Volkswagen shut down production early at its Wolfsburg plant. When Europe’s largest carmaker can’t keep factories running because of snow and wind, the myth of resilience collapses completely.
What Comes Next Is Worse
Saturday feels calmer. It’s deceptive.
Slush is refreezing into lethal black ice. A new Atlantic system arrives Sunday, bringing fresh snow and freezing rain to the UK, France, and Germany. The deep freeze holds until January 13–14.
Then comes the next threat: thaw. Rain on top of melting snow means flooding especially across the UK and Central Europe.
Authorities are quietly admitting that normal travel should not be expected before January 17–18, and even that depends on nothing else breaking.
That’s a dangerous assumption.
The Part That Won’t Melt
We have been here before.
2021 wasn’t that long ago.
The forecasts were clear. The risks were known. The preparation still failed.
The ice will melt. The snow will clear. Flights will eventually resume.
But the realization that Europe’s “advanced” systems can be undone by wind, cold, and a shortage of basic chemicals that doesn’t disappear with the weather. That sticks around.
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