An annual Christmas Day swimming race in London was called off Saturday after the water froze and a midwife had to ski to a mother-to-be on a snowbound Danish island. But European flights were almost back to normal after hundreds of passengers were trapped at the main Paris and Brussels airports overnight amid freezing chaos.
For the first time since 1981, swimmers arrived at the Serpentine in London's Hyde Park for the 100-yard (91-metre) open-air race to find the lake had frozen over. It was the result of a cold snap that forecasters predict could make this the coldest December in Britain for more than 100 years. On England's south coast, members of the Brighton Swimming Club took their annual Christmas dip in the Channel, where the temperature was a refreshing 3.3 degrees Celsius (38 degrees Fahrenheit). On the Danish island of Bornholm even a tracked military vehicle failed to get through the snow to take a midwife to the village of Tejn so that a colleague had to take to her skis instead.