A heavy snowstorm struck Austria on Friday, leaving five people dead. 

One man, aged 53, was crushed by a snowplow in the northern city of Linz, police said.

Avalanche risk remains high

Four skiers were killed in avalanches in the Tyrol region. Three of them died in a massive avalanche near the St Anton ski resort, officials said.

Two of the victims were recovered from the snow but could not be saved, and the third died in the hospital, a police spokesman said.

A German skier died in an avalanche in Nauders. He had been skiing off-piste with his 16-year-old son, who survived with serious injuries, police said.

The father-and-son pair was trying to cross a north-facing slope when a 400-meter-wide (1,310-foot) slab of snow broke loose, sweeping them some 200 to 300 meters downhill.

Authorities in Tyrol appealed for skiers not to go on off-piste slopes as the latest deaths took the number of people killed in avalanches in Austria this winter season to 21. They said the risk would remain high for several days.

Vienna's airport temporarily closed, chaotic scene on roads

Vienna International Airport temporarily paused flights on Friday morning due to heavy snowfall, and afternoon flights were also affected. Many outbound flights were delayed, and more than 230 inbound flights were disrupted or rerouted.

The area around the airport saw an accumulation of about 20 centimeters (nearly 8 inches) of snow, according to the Austrian Press Agency (APA).

Snow and ice on the roads of Austria's capital city, along with poor visibility, led to multiple traffic accidents, the national automobile association, OAMTC, reported.

Electric companies reported outages in several regions of Austria's south and east, including Styria, where 30,000 homes lost electricity.

What do we know about the snowstorm?

Heavy snowfall has been reported in several parts of Austria since Thursday. Snow totals of 10 to 30 centimeters (about 4 to 12 inches) were reported in several parts of the country.

Road maintenance services were hard at work to clear the snow, with some 1,000 lorry loads, totaling approximately 15,000 tons of snow, cleared so far.

Officials at the airport called on its passengers to check the status of their flights before they head to the airport.

For the latest updates, please check here: https://viennaairport.com/en/passengers

Edited by: Roshni Majumdar, Kieran Burke