This month has already been dubbed “Febrarch,” mixing March and February into a single word to convey the historic nature of the snowfall since March 22. More than 1.6 feet of snow – 50 centimeters, more than a half-meter – paralyzed ill-equipped Kyiv and parts of Ukraine as it fell continuously over the weekend.
It was a late March freak of nature that has
never been seen before by the living – or their parents and grandparents, for
that matter.
According to Liudmyla Savchenko, head of
forecast department in State Weather Service, such a heavy snowfall has not
been recorded since at least 1889 – and possibly ever. That is the first year
when monitoring of Kyiv’s weather began.
Savchenko said that the most intense snowfall took
place on the night of March 22, when 50 centimeters dropped on Kyiv. The total
snowfall so far has been more than half a meter, but heavy winds created
blizzard-like and whiteout conditions. It also made snowdrifts even deeper.
With temperatures solidly below freezing – -5 C to -12 C – the whole event
caused misery.
What Mother Nature dished out was made worse by
the lack of human planning. The blame game is well under way for the lack of
action – salting, sanding and shoveling – that would have mitigated the traffic
disasters.
City authorities, who seemed to be caught
completely unprepared by the weather, received plenty of warnings.
Savchenko says the Weather Service normally sends
forecasts to all governments, including the Presidential Administration, the
Kyiv City Administration and state roads office. In addition to that, on March
20 all of these institutions received a special warning about the extreme
snowfalls coming in two days.
However, Deputy Head of Kyiv City
Administration Oleksandr Mazurchak said the city “was not prepared” for the
snowfall because the forecasters only predicted 20 centimeters of snow. City
Administrator Oleksandr Popov was quoted over the weekend as saying that the
state of emergency, which was announced in the city on March 23, will last for
at least a week.
Bad weather paralyzed the work of the city
transport. Buses and even trams were stranded in the snow. Even the metro,
which mostly runs underground, was affected. Witnesses reported that entrance
to Vokzalna metro station was closed during the peak hour on March 22 because
the station was out of tokens.
The Metro’s press service confirmed that the
station was closed from 5:25 p.m. to 6:06 p.m., but said that tokens had
nothing to do with that. The real reason, according to the press spokesperson,
was that there were so many people arriving to the station that all escalators
were busy taking them up and out. He said that this happens from time to time
on Fridays because many people are leaving the city.
However, if they intended to leave the city by
train, it’s unlikely that they succeeded. Snow affected the railways too, delaying
all trains coming and going from Kyiv. Many routes were cancelled or postponed.
Photos shared online revealed that the city station hall was overcrowded with
people, and the arrivals board had every train marked as “late” during the weekend.
By the morning of March 25, 105 towns and
villages were not accessible by any transport in Ukraine, according to the
Emergencies Ministry. Moreover, 161 localities in central Ukraine remained
without electricity.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be
reached at [email protected].
