Thread: Crazy weather in Moscow

I just read in the news that Moscow has been seriously affected by an extreme snow and ice storm. Isstormsliknande oväder vållade kaos i Moskva - DN.SE

"The whole city is like a skating rink", the airports are closed and 200,000 people+ some hospitals have no electricity. Yet, it is no colder than 0 (unusually warm) Anyone affected by this?
Sounds strange!

Here in London it is -3 and a very thin layer of snow at the moment. All English people think that this is unimaginably cold... Even though the snow has been laying for over a week, the pavements and walkways have not had sand spread on them, so it's extremely slippery - pretty dangerous. All this makes me really miss home........... only 3 more months then I am out of here. In the meantime I am enjoying something that is "almost" like a real winter.

I've never seen anything like this. It was raining, water pouring down like in summer, but when the drops hit the ground they froze immediately. My car was covered with ice crust 1 cm thick. It took me 40 minutes to remove the ice from the windows at least. Everything was covered with ice, trees look beautiful, but it's too heavy for them - many branches broke. And even if you don't move - you still slide along the tiniest slope on the ground. Walking and driving was extremely dangerous last night. I even received an emergency message on my mobile - they told me to stay home, but I was 40 km from my home and I had to drive through this. Fortunately, I managed to get home safely (walking from the parking lot was probably more dangerous than driving - every surface was covered with ice).

The problem is that yesterday was +3 C and raining during the whole day and today is -3 and all that water turned into ice. Electric wires became covered with icicles and many not withstand their weight and break. Fortunately, my town still has electricity, but many neighboring ones weren't so lucky. I've spent about a hour today scraping centimeter-thick crust of ice from my car.

I was going to put this on the 'weather' thread, but since crazy weather is everywhere now, this is maybe just as good here:

Now, this is ridiculous! There were lightnings in Moscow that night. Lightnings! In December!

Atlanta weather | First white Christmas since 1882
Weather anomalies: Georgia (hot, sticky) in the US got it's first white Christmas since 1882.

I'm leaving tomorrow for Krasnoyarsk through Moscow...

Originally Posted by Zubr

I'm leaving tomorrow for Krasnoyarsk through Moscow...

In wich airport shall you land in Moscow? Domodedovo still has problems with electricity and Sheremet'evo and Vnukovo also delay some flights as far as I heard.

They land transit flights in Vnukovo.

I was supposed to transit through Sheremet'evo.

It's not Moscow, but we've had a bit of weather here. A "Winter hurricane" parked off the Cape for a couple days. 80 mph wind gusts; 50 at the house, more at Motel Hell.. Thunder and lightning and a foot of show.


If you look real close, that's me waving.

Originally Posted by capecoddah

It's not Moscow, but we've had a bit of weather here. A "Winter hurricane" parked off the Cape for a couple days. 80 mph wind gusts; 50 at the house, more at Motel Hell.. Thunder and lightning and a foot of show.


If you look real close, that's me waving.

Here in New Jersey we had over 2 feet of snow. The roads are still a nightmare. The Garden State Parkway south bound at 8:45 pm still has an over 12 mile backup. I will be sitting in that mess in about an hour.

Scott

Here are some pictures wich show how it's looked like:

English Russia

Originally Posted by Basil77

Here are some pictures wich show how it's looked like:

http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2010/12/27/wonderful-icebound-moscow/]English Russia [/url]

Wow, I guess it must have frozen very fast....

I read that the reasons houses in the city are getting more big icecicles hanging from the roof is because it's becoming quite popular to live in the attic. Normally, if nobody lives in the attic, then there is no condensation coming from there, so no big icicles are formed. If icicles are formed on freestanding houses then it is a sign of poor insulation.

Not sure what happens if an icicle falls on someones head!

Originally Posted by Hanna

Not sure what happens if an icicle falls on someones head!

This, for example. Far sidewalk at :36. The woman's life is basically ruined. It's a serious problem, particularly in St. Petes I think.
YouTube - Ледяной произвол в Питере

That's terrible!!! Was the story in the paper?

There is a big debate about it in Sweden - new health and safety risk since people started living in attics. Basically, the question is: Whose responsibility is it to get rid of the icicles, what's the maximum size it can get to before they have to do something. Should there be laws about this.. etc.

And every article ends with "Let's solve this before an icicle falls on a small child... " or something like that. It's not really clear to me whether that has happened or not.

In the meantime the advise is that when it's thawing, people should try to walk close to the walls - apparently icicles fall outward so you are safe if you are close to the wall.

Hanna, have you even been near a spot where a 1.5 m icicle as thick as your waist fell on the ground? It hits the ground with terrific force (they can make holes in cars - both in the roof and the bottom - it's more like a small avalanche)



and they explode into many fragments (some can be as big as man's head) which fly in all directions. If you don't happen to be directly under it you'll probably survive, but the shards can break some bone on you even if you happen to stand several meters away.
It's important to remove them before they grow big, but sometimes accidents do happen even with smaller ones.

No never. I mostly did not grow up in the city, but outside and in the countryside. Lived in central Stockholm for about 2 years, but I can't remember that happening. I have seen them hanging from buildings of course, but never falling... Here in England where I've lived for almost 10 years, it is never cold enough.. I am sooooo homesick for REAL winters. This is my last "winter" in England. I promise you, -25 and snowstorm is BETTER than +2, rain, wind, and no sunshine.

Just read another horrible winter story. A man was very drunk.... and (apparently) lay down on a snow drift (not sure how to say this in English, I mean the pile of snow that's made by the snow plough).

Later, it snowed some more, and the snow plough came back... somehow the man, dead or alive, had ended up INSIDE the pile of snow. His body was discovered when some trucks came to transport all the snow outside of the city.

It's awful to think that he might still have been alive (i.e. not frozen to death) but too drunk to get out of the snow.
And what about the drivers of the snow plough. How come they didn't notice! Horrible story.

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С ней рядом находятся родители и муж. Иреней Калачёв в «Живом Журнале» постоянно публикует новости о состоянии своей жены. 11 января он написал: в скором времени, по прогнозам врачей, Милана сможет самостоятельно дышать и глотать.

I was hit by a huge icicle a couple of days ago too. Good thing: I was inside my car so I wasn't injured. Bad thing: the car was pretty damaged and although It's insured I most likely shall not get the payment because the insurance company demanded a reference from police about the incident. But road police refused to give me a reference since that's not a road accident and sent me to criminal police. Criminal police also refused since it's not a criminal case and sent me to the communal service wich serves the building from wich the icicle fell. And they told me to fvck off and relax. So now it looks like I have to pay for repair myself despite insurance.