Snow cyclone paralyses traffic

BREAKING CLIMATE NEWS
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, February 28 (Itar-Tass) - A snow cyclone that has moved from the Sakhalin Island on Tuesday has covered with deep snow almost all local roads. Traffic is paralysed on the main 800-kilometre highway connecting the south and north of Sakhalin. There is no way from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to the Nevelsk and Kholmsk cities. At some places the thickness of snow layer above roads is reaching 1.5 metres. Over 130 bulldozers, graders, rotary and other snow-clearing machines have been dispatched to liquidate the aftermath of the snowstorm, the automobile roads department of the Sakhalin region has reported.
The descent of snow avalanches on roads has been registered everywhere. The avalanches are not big, but in many places they come down one on another and form dense snow layers on roads. A snow jam on the Lovetsky pass on which the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk-Nevelsk road runs is three kilometres in size.
According to Sakhalin meteorologists, at present the centre of the cyclone has moved to the Sea of Okhotsk, but snowstorms continue in the north of the island where the wind speed is 22 metres per second.