MOSCOW, March 24 (Itar-Tass) – Moscow City authorities issued a warning Sunday night saying the situation on city roads might get highly complicated due to highly unfavorable weather conditions.
“A snowstorm is pouring out on the streets and gusts of wind reach 18 meters per second,” a spokesman for the city’s transport department said. “Weather forecasters say the snow cover may get 15 centimeters thicker before midnight Sunday.”
“The air temperature is as low as minus 8 C at the moment and it may descend to minus 11 C overnight,” he said. “The conditions are highly conducive to the accumulation of snowdrifts and the icing of roads. Forecasts say uninterrupted snowfall and gale-like wind may continue Monday.”
The spokesman said, however, that the situation on the roads was not critical yet but big impediments to traffic might appear Monday morning.
In this connection, the transport department issued a strong recommendation to the Muscovites to refrain from using private cars and turn to the services of public transport instead.
It also made a strong request to observe the rules of and regulations for parking the cars on the streets, since the carelessly parked cars always obstruct the municipal services’ efforts to do snowplowing.
The department warned that the incorrectly parked cars will be removed from the streets to specialized parking areas immediately.