HAMBURG – Heavy overnight snowfalls of upwards of 20 centimetres in some areas created chaos on German roads and highways Thursday morning, disrupted air operations and caused commuters to arrive hours late to work.

Police in states around the country, but particularly in the central states of North Rhine-Westfalia, Hessen and Lower Saxony, reported numerous road accidents.

At Frankfurt’s international Rhein-Main airport, at least 20 flights had to be cancelled amid the heavy snowfalls which disrupted operations.

On the autobahn near Cologne, traffic was stopped for hours after lorries slid out of control, blocking the lanes.

In nearby Duesseldorf, a police spokesman said, “we’re deluged by traffic accidents”.

In the Weser-Ems region in the northwest, police reported 43 accidents within a period of a few hours.

Three persons were injured, two seriously, in an accident on the Berlin-Hamburg autobahn after a lorry rammed into a road clearance vehicle, with a transporter then hitting the lorry.