The meteorologists had announced it a few days ago and it appears as announced: snow almost everywhere in Turkey, even at the Turkish Riviera, snow for the first time since decades.

Like the previous day the heavy snowfall continued, locally so strong that most of the traffic came to a standstill. The country experienced a drop in temperature as rarely before, between eight and fifteen degrees locally the temperatures decreased, the snowfall will continue until Saturday at least.

The sudden onset of winter began almost simultaneously in the Marmara region and at the Black Sea, some of the individual regions and cities such as Bolu, Erzincan, Bitlis, Muş and Karabük have been affected by heavy snowfalls in early December already. The education of pupils has had to be suspended. Several villages were cut off from the outside world.

Similarly extreme the situation is since yesterday, only that now almost the entire country is affected. After several decades as much snow that much snow has fallen, that even the highway D-400 from Antalya to Mersin in the region Alanya and Gazipasa was affected by the snowfall that it had to be cleared. Since there are no proper clearance vehicles on site, construction vehicles had to be used instead. On the beach promenade in Kemer the snow was five centimeters high.

The motorways to Denizli, Mugla and Afyon were navigable only with snow chains. The route to Konya behind Akseki was completely blocked. On the highway from Istanbul to Ankara, the vehicle accumulated to several kilometers in length. No more traffic movement was possible because the road services could not manage due to the amount of snow. Already in the last two nights, the temperatures in Antalya had fallen below freezing.

Heavy snowfall with thunderstorms and storms also led to chaos in the Turkish metropolis Istanbul. Turkish Airlines has cancelled more than 350 flights on Thursday to and from Istanbul, as the airline published. Yesterday already the Ataturk Airport was closed due to heavy snow and bustle temporarily. Around one and a half hours not take-off and landing was allowed, because in the morning a machine had slipped off the runway already.

The news agency DHA reported that in the west of the city up to 70 centimeters of snow had been fallen, the schools in Istanbul are still closed. In road transport, heavy snow fall led to chaotic conditions with hundreds of accidents. In the hilly districts of Istanbul still flowing traffic on small steep streets is hardly possible, motorists had to put on chains. The central Istiklal Caddesi shopping street had turned into a slippery mud slope.

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