Much of the continent was battened down against the harsh weather, the coldest December in a decade in Britain, where temperatures plunged to minus 11 Celsius in Scotland and northeastern England.
France reported a second death Thursday from freezing temperatures after snowstorms left thousands of people trapped in their cars in sub-freezing temperatures this week.
Road conditions remained icy and dangerous in many areas, but the only serious disruptions were in western Brittany and around the Channel port of Calais in the north.
A sea search was on overnight off Calvados on France's Normandy coast after a yacht captain fell overboard in "difficult conditions", the local maritime authority said.
His two crewmates sounded the alarm late on Thursday and an air and sea search began.
Most of the country has gone on winter alert, opening extra shelters to protect homeless people from the cold, which claimed a second victim overnight.
Casualties of the cold
A 52-year-old woman was found dead of cold outside the wooden shack where she lived in the northwestern town of Le Mans. Police said she had suffered from poor health and had a drinking problem.
A homeless man in his 40s was found dead in a car on Tuesday in the central-eastern city of Lyon, thought to have died of cold.
Snow was likely to blanket many parts of Britain throughout Friday, weather forecasters said.
Newspapers reported that a man sleeping rough had been found frozen to death in West Bromwich, central England, where temperatures fell to minus seven degrees Celsuis.
High-speed train services from Paris to Lille, as well as Thalys and
Eurostar links to London and Brussels, were coping with delays of up to 40 minutes, as drivers were told to reduce their speed.
Travellers at airports in Prague, Florence and Charleroi in southern
Belgium experienced serious flight disruptions due to heavy snows and swirling winds.
Across Scandinavia, snowstorms cut power lines and disrupted rail and road traffic, with the situation expected to worsen in some places.
Sixteen people were injured in traffic accidents on icy roads in Finland, where more snow was expected in the south.
A snowstorm also swept Denmark, causing train delays, truck accidents and blocking several smaller roads, the Ritzau news agency reported.
Police have warned Danes not to take to the roads in the east of the country.
Between 150 and 200 piglets died when a truck carrying around 800 of the animals rolled over in snowbound northern Denmark, local media reported.
In Switzerland, around 20 people were hurt in road accidents, including a 59-year-old man who was seriously injured when his car skidded on ice.
Road traffic was badly disrupted across Poland, especially in the northern Gdansk region, as well as in Hungary.
Snow caused few disruptions in Austria, however, beyond a traffic snarl on the Vienna ring road, since snow ploughs are systematically deployed on the roads during the harsh winters.
Traffic was also reported to be near normal in Germany, which has been coated in white from north to south, with 90 centimetres of snow measured on Mount Brocken in the central Harz mountain range.
In Turkey, where snow and ice claimed four lives and cut road access to several thousand villages this week, temperatures dropped to minus 33 Celsius in some eastern mountain regions.