Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures continued to disrupt travel across Europe as airports at cities including London and Edinburgh remained shut and Eurostar Group Ltd. canceled almost half its services.

London’s Gatwick airport, the U.K.’s second busiest, will remain closed until at least 6 a.m. local time tomorrow, according to its website. Edinburgh airport pushed back opening until at least 4 p.m., and London City was closed until 2 p.m. Airports in Dublin and Geneva opened this morning.

In the U.K., the earliest widespread snowfall since 1993 has frozen over roads, disrupting traffic, with freezing weather likely to last until at least Dec. 8, according to private forecaster British Weather Services. The worst-hit areas overnight were south London, Sussex, Kent and Hampshire with as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters), said Robin Thwaytes, a spokesman for the state-funded Met Office.

In northern England, Yorkshire and the surrounding regions have had “snow shower after snow shower for days,” he said in a phone interview, though blizzards are likely to dwindle across the country in the next 24 hours. “By this time tomorrow it will be fairly dry but frosty.”

Eurostar Services

Eurostar canceled seven services from Paris to London and six in the other direction, plus five each way between the U.K. capital and Brussels, to avoid a repeat of last winter’s breakdowns in the Channel Tunnel. Speed restrictions in both the U.K. and northern France will create delays of as much as 90 minutes for other services, Eurostar said on its website.

Go-Ahead Group Plc’s Southern Railways, which operates commuter services from southeast England into London, said it canceled all trains because of adverse weather.

Temperatures were expected to drop as low as minus-14 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) in northwest Scotland this morning, while London and southeast England will see temperatures of about minus-3 degrees Celsius, the Met Office said on its website.

The area affected most in the U.K. today was the south, from Kent through Dorset, said Paul Watters, a spokesman for the Automobile Association. The rescue service responded to 18,000 calls yesterday, and had 100,000 in the past six days, he said.

Germany, France

Fresh snowfall also blanketed Germany last night, exceeding 15 centimeters in some parts of the southeast. Temperatures will drop as low as minus-20 degrees Celsius in central Germany and very cold weather will persist until at least Dec. 4, according to the German Weather Service.

“We’re selling masses of scarves, woolly hats and gloves at the moment, said Hartmut Scheller, a store owner in Berlin’s southwestern suburb of Steglitz. “If temperatures persist at these lows, we’ll soon be out of stock.”

Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, canceled 40 flights as of 7:30 a.m. local time, largely because of closures at other airports, Fraport AG spokesman Thomas Uber said by telephone, adding that the main runway opened again after the wind died down overnight. Flight traffic in Munich was largely back to normal, said Florian Steuer, an airport spokesman.

France’s DGAC civil aviation authority ordered the cancellation of one in four flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle today and one in ten from Orly, the city’s other major airport, according to an e-mailed statement.

Hundreds of vehicles were stranded early this morning in northern and western France after renewed snowfalls. The main RN12 highway along the northern coast of Brittany was closed and hundreds of heavy trucks taken off the roads in Normandy, AFP reported, citing the French meteorological agency.

Power Demand

U.K. same-day natural gas rose for a fifth day, the longest upward trend since October last year, with gas for today rising as much as 3.6 percent to 64 pence a therm, according to broker data on Bloomberg. About 80 percent of the country’s homes and businesses use natural gas for heating. It’s also used to generate about half of Britain’s electricity supply.

U.K. baseload power for the next working day lost 10.50 pounds, or 15 percent, to 60.50 pounds ($94.50) a megawatt-hour, broker data show. The contract closed at 71 pounds yesterday, its highest level in almost two years. Baseload is delivered around the clock.

--With assistance from Chris Peterson, Benjamin Purvis, David Altaner and Catherine Airlie in London, Warren Giles and Dylan Griffiths in Geneva, Laurence Frost in Paris, Mike Gavin in Frankfurt, Andreas Cremer in Berlin, Elena Logutenkova in Zurich, and Stuart Biggs in Tokyo. Editors: Peter Branton, Chris Jasper.