ATHENS — Very low temperatures will prevail from Saturday throughout Greece, which will continue until at least the middle of next week due to the arrival of the cold front 'Medea', the National Observatory of Athens weather service, meteo.gr, forecast on Thursday.

The cold masses of air that are currently over the Central and Northern Europe are approaching Greece and from Saturday will start to affect the northern parts of the country, initially, and afterwards the rest of Greece.

Freezing conditions will prevail over a large part of the country and a total frost in the central and northern parts. Dense snow will fall over the greater part of Greece, even at very low altitudes, combined with strong northerly winds from Sunday.

Prior to Medea's arrival, the weather will deteriorate with rain and thunderstorms forecast from the afternoon and gale-force winds at sea.

Broad meeting regarding imminent cold front

Α broad meeting will be held on Thursday at 17:00 at the operations centre for Civil Protection, chaired by Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis and Deputy Civil Protection and Crises Management Minister Nikos Hardalias, in the presence of Alternate Interior Minister Stelios Petsas and Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister Theodoros Livanios on the best coordination of the all the agencies involved ahead of the imminent cold front that is expected to hit a large part of the country in the following days.

European deep freeze serves up fun, frustrations and danger

The deep freeze gripping large parts of Europe is serving up both fun and frustrations, with heavy snow cutting power to thousands of homes in central Slovakia and snarling traffic in the east of the country, while snow on Dutch roads and sidewalks allowed some parents to pull children to school on sleds instead of riding them on bicycles.

Britain experienced its coldest night for a quarter century, with the temperature falling to minus 22.9 Celsius (minus 9.2 Fahrenheit) in Braemar, northeast Scotland — the lowest recorded in the U.K. since 1995, according to the Met Office weather service.

Most of Britain has experienced days of sub-zero temperatures and snowfall in the wake of winter Storm Darcy. The cold snap froze the famous fountains in London’s Trafalgar Square and forced the temporary closure of some U.K. coronavirus vaccination sites.

Icicles coating a jetty on the frozen inland Ijsselmeer Sea north of Amsterdam drew photographers, while those hanging a house in the central German city of Erfurt attracted the attention of firefighters, who snapped them off.

In France, cold weather and ice alerts were in force for northern swathes of the country, as thermometers dipped well below freezing, making roads and pavements treacherous. Among the coldest places was the riverfront city of Nancy, where the weather bureau reported minus 11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees F) before dawn on Thursday.

Berlin police said a man rescued alive from a frozen pond in the German capital has died. Police said Thursday that firefighters pulled the 43-year-old man out of the water after he had been submerged for more than two hours and managed to revive him, but he died in the hospital Wednesday evening. The man and three others had made holes in the ice to go ice swimming.

In Albania, authorities evacuated several families, hundreds of sheep and thousands of chickens after the Buna River in the northwest burst its banks.

Even if the polar conditions persist, a legendary Dutch ice skating race over frozen canals and lakes in the northern Friesland province will not go ahead.

The organizers confirmed this week that the 11 Cities Tour, which attracts 25,000 participants and up to 1.5 million spectators, will not happen this winter due to the current Dutch coronavirus lockdown. In one of the “cities,” the small town of Hindeloopen, nobody was skating on the canals Thursday morning. A row of twigs jutting out of the frozen surface served as a warning for dangerously thin ice.

With ice likely thick enough soon for people to skate on Hofvijver Lake, which runs along one side of the Dutch parliamentary complex, workers on Thursday made sure that skaters couldn't get right up to Prime Minister Mark Rutte's office by bashing through ice to create a water barrier.