Nature

First snow of the season falls in Vlissingen

By Janene Pieters on January 22, 2019 - 10:40

The first snow of the season started falling in Vlissingen around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday. "Nicely according to the plans", Weerplaza said. Meteorological institute KNMI expects that around 3 centimeters of snow will fall in the Netherlands on Tuesday, and issued a code yellow warning of icy roads.

Late this morning and in the early afternoon, the snowfall will also reach Friesland, Flevoland, Utrecht and the western half of Noord-Brabant. The first flakes will start falling in Gelderland around 1:00 p.m. and Limburg, the eastern part of Noord-Brabant, Overijssel Drenthe and Groningen will see snow during the second half of the afternoon, according to AD.

Most of the snowfall will happen in the period between morning and evening rush hour, so Weeronline doesn't expect too many problems on the road. The snowfall can cause icy and slick roads, like the KNMI warns, but "it probably won't come to a code orange", according to Weeronline.

Public works department Rijkswaterstaat deployed 1,200 people, 546 gritters and 350 snow plows to keep the highways free of snow during the day.

The snowfall is expected to lead to the cancelation of flights to, from and through Amsterdam, KLM said on Monday. Schiphol is expecting a busy day with some delays caused by the snow.

NS and ProRail adjusted the train timetable due to the weather. Around 80 percent of the usual trains are running on Tuesday.

Let it snow #sneeuw pic.twitter.com/Lqbiwm0d6e

— Keviin (@PopcornSweetG) January 22, 2019

Needless to say the Dutch for snow is the apparently similar but impossible to pronounce ‘sneeuw’ pic.twitter.com/q5lgHa4wtw

— Danny Kemp (@dannyctkemp) January 22, 2019