Greece in the grip of Snow Weather – Motorists stuck in Highways tagged: , , , , , ,

Greece in the grip of Snow Weather – Motorists stuck in Highways

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Politics, weather

Greece is in the grip of snow weather that started Monday afternoon with low temperatures, snow, sleet and strong winds reaching up to 9-10 Beaufort (North Aegean Sea). The national highway from Athens to Lamia was closed to traffic after 08:00 pm due to particularly extreme weather conditions hitting the area of Fthiotida prefecture. Vehicles are trapped on the highway or move at a speed of 15-20 km per hour.
 
Trucks traffic has been banned from the highway Lamia to Athens and Lamia to Thessaloniki. The measure aims to unburden the traffic on Greece’s main highway and to avoid further bottlenecks. Trucks are parked near the city of Lamia.
 
In some areas vehicles are stuck for over four hours.
 
At the highway toll booth of  Malakasa, 127 km north of Athens, motorists complain about traffic queues up to 40 km and that are unable to move for more than an hour (fimotro)
 
At the same time snow ploughs are trapped between the immobilized private vehicles and cannot remove the snow from the streets.
 
Of course, clever Greek motorists are convinced that snow is an easy to beat enemy, just a challenge in white and often drive without snow chains.
 

But that’s business as usual! Greece has been waiting since days for the snowy weather and at the end of the day, national highway network is paralyzed and the country is cut into two.

 Every year…. the same procedure… as last year!