Another week of winter in Romania
Bad weather has taken Romania in its grip again, hampering road, rail and air traffic
Corina Cristea, 19.03.2018, 14:13
In mid March, Romania has again fallen prey to the whims of weather, as temperatures have dropped dramatically as of Saturday, by 10-15 degrees Celsius, way under the normal average this time of the year. Weather experts say that the bad weather will stay the whole week and have warned that, after the yellow warning for heavy rain, wind and low temperatures in place for the eastern half of Romania, rain will gradually turn into drizzle and snow.
The freezing rain, which has affected Romania every winter in the past years, has produced glaze ice on roads and railways, hampering traffic. Several sectors of national road have been closed because of the glaze. Problems were also reported at the Henri Coanda National Airport, where the freezing rain didn’t allow planes to take off for more than three hours. Airplanes were kept on the ground as defrosting operations were hampered by the extremely aggressive freezing rain, which would cover the planes in ice again in a matter of minutes, making it impossible for them to take off.
According to the Bucharest Airports Company, the runways were treated with anti-freezing substances, so landing was safe. Railway traffic has also been hampered and trains have been delayed for hours, especially in the south, because the contact wires were covered in glaze, and many electrical engines could not be used.
The National Road Infrastructure Administration has announced that one thousand special vehicles have been used to spread non-slip substances in order to ensure normal traffic on the road sectors affected by the bad weather. Most problems have been reported in the north of the country, where it has been snowing heavily and the roads have been covered in a thick layer of snow, which could not be removed because of the wind.
Glaze ice has also affected the capital Bucharest, covering cars, trees, sidewalks and the roads. Hydrologists have issued yellow and orange alerts for flooding, including on the Danube, and have warned that the situation will get even more complicated when temperatures start going up again.
