A rare, heavy snowfall in central Spain closed Madrid's airport and paralysed city traffic while several rivers in Germany were frozen as much of Europe endured Siberian conditions Friday.
Russian gas cuts to several European countries this week have aggravated the the effects of the bitter cold which has left much of the continent shivering since the end of December.
Not everyone was beaten by the extreme weather though, with some Dutch taking advantage of the cold snap to skate along iced-over canals and lakes.
"What I love most is the crunching of the ice under the skates and the sensation of gliding," said Marie-Therese Sluijters-Rompa, a 62-year-old retiree who came to the western village of Kinderdijk to skate with her husband.
"It is a little piece of heaven," she added.
Elsewhere, however, the freezing conditions caused widespread disruption.
All four runways at Madrid's Barajas airport, Europe's fourth busiest, were closed for nearly five hours because of heavy snow and low visibility, disrupting the travel plans of thousands of people.
Hundreds of flights were delayed during the period the airport was closed and 52 were diverted, Spain's national airport authority AENA said.
Nearly 400 kilometres (250 miles) of traffic jams and dozens of road accidents were reported in and around the Spanish capital.
Several centimetres of accumulated snow forced football champions Real Madrid to cancel a training session.
Office workers gathered at building entrances and windows in Madrid to watch the unfamiliar sight of snowflakes falling in the Spanish capital while others staged snowball fights on city pavements.
Across the border in France's southern Marseille region around 1,000 homes were still without electricity Friday with days of heavy snow -- not seen for 20 years -- causing major disruption to travel.
France's health ministry urged people to check up on those vulnerable to the cold, following a "significant increase" in the number of elderly people arriving in hospital emergency rooms.
Many were suffering from de-hydration after remaining "isolated for several days" due to the cold weather, Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said.
In Germany, the death toll from the cold snap rose to three and several rivers were frozen over, blocking ship traffic, authorities said.
Drift ice covered 80 to 90 percent of the surface of the river Elbe from Doemnitz to the Germany's main port of Hamburg in the north, a spokeswoman for the Water and Shipping Office said.
Germany is experiencing one of its coldest winters of the past 100 years, with the mercury dropping as low as minus 34.6 degrees Celsius (minus 30.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the mountains in the south.
Conditions began to ease Friday in Poland, where one person had died during the night from the cold, bringing the death toll in the country to 83 since November 1, most of them homeless people.
In the Portuguese city of Porto, four people died in a fire apparently caused by a faulty heater, while authorities in several cities issued tents to homeless people.
The World Meteorological Organization said Europe's severe cold spell was in part brought on by La Nina, an upsurge of cooler water to the Pacific Ocean surface.
"However, it should be recalled that weather conditions are the result of extremely complex interactions, and, therefore, one particular event cannot be attributed to one specific cause," the UN weather agency said.
The effects of plummeting temperatures were exacerbated in around a dozen European nations by Russia's decision to turn off the natural gas supplies transiting through Ukraine to Europe.
Many schools remained shut and gas-rationing continued in Bulgaria, which received no Russian gas for the fourth day in a row as temperatures plunged to minus 17 degrees Celsius.
A quarter of Bulgaria's 7.6-million citizens rely on heating from gas-fired plants that have been forced to cut back supply and switch to oil.
The Czech presidency of the European Union admitted Thursday that the 27-nation bloc had been ill-prepared for the gas crisis and needed better contingency planning.
Russia cut supplies for Ukraine's domestic market on January 1 due to a payments dispute, and then on Wednesday shut off gas transiting through the former Soviet republic to Europe.
