After more than a week of brutal cold, much of Europe was buried this weekend under unusually heavy snow.

Rome faces a crisis following a two-day storm that brought the heaviest snowfall since 1985.

Today many highways are blocked and 33,000 homes are without power, according to the Financial Times.

A friend traveling through Rome tells us that coffee bars have run out of milk, shops are running out of food and people are running out of oil to heat their homes.

Mayor Gianni Alemanno has blamed the civil protection agency for failing to warn him of the severity of the storm: somehow there was a miscommunication and he thought the prediction was for 35mm of snow rather than 35cm, according to the FT.