High Winds, Snow, Rain Pelt W. Europe

Fall storms packing winds of up to 94 miles per hour churned across Western Europe on Monday, killing at least four people, toppling trees “like dominoes” and bringing the first snowfall of the season to the Swiss Alps.

British police said an elderly man was killed when a 50-foot poplar tree fell on his car in Eltham, in south London, and a woman was killed when a tree crushed her car at Morden, several miles to the west.

Several other motorists sustained broken bones and other injuries when trees and branches smashed into their vehicles, police said.

The storm, accompanied by torrential rains, toppled more than 20 trees in London and south England.

“Trees were coming down like dominoes,” said a spokesman for the London Weather Center. Strong winds were forecast again today in southern England.

Traffic Halted

Fallen trees blocked several rail lines, and the rain caused flooding and a spate of accidents throughout the area, authorities said. The wind also gave ferry passengers a rough ride across the English Channel.

Traffic was halted along the seafront at the historic port of Seaford, in Sussex, as huge waves threw rocks and shingles against buildings along the waterfront.

Flood warnings were issued along England’s south coast and in the Rhonda Valley in south Wales, while north Wales had its first snow. North Scotland and northeast England also had snow flurries.

Police in the Netherlands said the storm hit suddenly during the afternoon rush hour, killing two construction workers and injuring dozens of other people around the nation.

Trucks Overturned

The blustery winds, measured at more than 62 m.p.h., blew a 27-year-old man off a ladder in The Hague, and he died later in a hospital. In the southern city of Hertogenbosch, a 31-year-old man died after falling through a glass roof 24 feet below, police said.

The storm overturned trucks, uprooted dozens of trees in Amsterdam, smashed the roofs of cars and blocked the capital’s narrow canal-side streets, police spokesman Klaas Wilting said.

He said several of the city’s subway lines were knocked out when the storm ripped off their overhead power lines. Huge traffic jams developed as highways in the western Netherlands were blocked by overturned trucks and fallen trees.

Train service was disrupted between Amsterdam and Brussels, Schiphol airport and The Hague, and between Utrecht, the nation’s main rail hub, and the southern Netherlands, a railway spokesman said. It was not known when the damage would be repaired.

Alps Get Snow

In Switzerland, a storm brought winds of up to 94 m.p.h. and blanketed the Alps with snow, prompting travelers’ advisories for several mountain passes.

The Swiss Meteorological Office said the storm dropped 2 3/4 inches of snow on the Gotthard Pass, and the Automobile Club said chains were needed to cross Gotthard and several other passes as well as the Great St. Bernard tunnel access road.

But mountain traffic continued to move normally, the automobile club said.

Forecasts called for more precipitation this week, and Swiss officials said nearly a foot of snow might accumulate.