February twenty-one, twenty twenty-six. Snow fell hard across Austria. Forty centimetres since Thursday. Sixteen inches. Two dead confirmed by evening. A fifty-three-year-old man in Linz crushed when a roof slab let go. A German skier buried in an avalanche near Nauders in Tyrol. His sixteen-year-old son seriously injured.
Ratopati reports the toll at two. The Good Morning News says five. Four skiers killed in avalanches in Tyrol. Three in a giant slide near St Anton. Tyrol authorities count twenty-one avalanche deaths this winter season. They warned skiers off backcountry slopes. Risk stays high for days.
Vienna Airport shut morning flights. Afternoon services disrupted. One main highway around Vienna closed for hours. Other sections blocked by snowdrifts, stranded lorries, poor visibility. OAMTC the national automobile association reported the closures.
Power out. Thirty thousand households in Styria. Forty thousand in Slovenia according to local media. Northeast Slovenia hit hard. Electric companies reported cuts across southern and eastern regions.
Graz in the southeast under avalanche alert. The Alpine nation braces. Snow keeps falling.
By Saturday the disruption spread wider. Vienna’s orbital highway shut for several hours. Snowdrifts and abandoned vehicles clogged remaining routes. Poor visibility persisted. Afternoon flights at Vienna Airport ran disrupted. Morning departures cancelled entirely.
In Linz a residential complex became a death trap. A slab of snow released from the roof onto a fifty-three-year-old man. He died at the scene. Police confirmed the details. In Tyrol a German ski athlete perished in an avalanche. Officials said a massive slide near St Anton ski resort claimed three lives. A fourth skier died on a slope at Nauders buried by snow. His sixteen-year-old son survived with serious injuries.
Tyrol officials appealed for skiers to avoid off-piste terrain. The latest deaths pushed the winter avalanche toll to twenty-one. Risk stays elevated for days. Up to forty centimetres blanketed the Alpine nation since Thursday triggering alerts for southeast Austria especially around Graz.
Utility firms reported blackouts across southern and eastern zones. Styria lost power to thirty thousand homes. Neighbouring Slovenia saw forty thousand households affected. Local media described major disruption in the northeast.
