The worst February cold spell Europe has seen in decades may last until the end of the month, leading meteorologists said, raising the prospect of further deaths and an extended spike in European spot gas prices, - Reuters reported.
"We do have higher confidence in a change by mid-February, but not to milder weather," Leon Brown, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Britain, told Reuters. "February will probably remain a cold month right to the end."
The cold and heavy snowfall has killed hundreds of people across Europe. The temperature in some eastern countries has plummeted to nearly minus 40 degrees Celsius.
More than 130 villages remained without electricity in Bulgaria on Wednesday and the army was delivering food and medicines, the Defence Ministry said.
Bulgaria declared Wednesday a day of mourning for eight people who died after melting snow caused a dam to burst, flooding an entire village. Two people are missing.
The European Union's crisis response chief Kristalina Georgieva said the worst of the flooding was yet to come.
In Bosnia, authorities reported five more deaths from the cold and snow on Wednesday, taking the total to 13.
In Serbia, where 13 people have died and 70,000 are cut off by snow, authorities urged people to remove icicles from roofs after a woman in Belgrade was killed by falling ice.
An energy official in Serbia said while demand for electricity had soared, ice was hampering production in some hydro-power plants and coal trains were struggling to run.
A Croatian radio station said high winds had deposited fish from the Adriatic sea onto the island of Pag. "Instead of going fishing or to the market, people are taking their shopping bags and collecting fish on the shore," Zadar radio reported.
