The snow depth breaks a record set in 1966, when snow drifts measured 62 centimetres, the weather centre said.

The Russian capital has seen heavy snowfalls since Friday. So far this month, almost 50 centimetres of snow has fallen, which is three times the monthly average, the weather centre said.

Monday's snowfall was expected to also break a 33-year record by reaching more than 10.5 millimetres in the water equivalent over 24 hours, meteorologists said.

More than 17,000 snowploughs worked to remove the snow Monday, Andrei Tysbin, the city official in charge of snow clearing, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Workers cleared 417,000 cubic metres (14,725 cubic feet) of snow from city streets from Sunday to Monday, a city government spokesman told the Interfax news agency.

Despite the extreme weather, local airports continued to operate normally Monday.

Snow, cold spell transport chaos in Sweden
Stockholm (AFP) Feb 22, 2010 - Freezing temperatures and record snowfalls caused transportation chaos for travellers in Sweden on Monday, while the threat of collapsing buildings forced a number of schools to close.

Around one in three Swedish trains was cancelled, including all traffic on the busy Stockholm-Gothenburg route, while most other trains were delayed, Ulf Wallin, a spokesman for Sweden's state rail company SJ, told AFP.

"Things are obviously not going well," he said. "I would say probably 100,000 people have been affected by this."

Delays and cancellations have plagued the rails ever since abnormally cold temperatures arrived at the start of the year, with the mercury below freezing across Sweden and dropping as low as minus 40 Celsius in the north.

In Stockholm, where temperatures lingered around minus 15 Celsius (minus five Fahrenheit) on Monday, all subway lines above ground were halted, as the local mass transport company SL scrambled to lay on replacement buses.

"I came out here at 6:45 am to try to get on a bus, but they all just sped past since they were already overcrowded when they got here," Helene Ulman Lilja, 29, told AFP in the Stockholm suburb of Bagarmossen.

"We live in Sweden. You would think that a little snow and cold would be an easy thing to handle," she said.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt expressed disappointment.

"I understand that people are irritated.... Winter is after all one of the four seasons in this country and we have to ask ourselves why we haven't been able to handle the situation better," he told the domestic TT news agency.

Snow blocking the rails and ice and cold freezing the outdoor switches are the main problems affecting both the long-distance trains and the subways.

"There has just been so much snow and the cold has lasted so long that the switches are not working properly," Wallin said.

The trains themselves were also seeing more damage due to the drawn-out cold spell.

"There are long lines to all of our repair shops," he said.

Many schools and daycare centres, as well as a large shopping centre, were closed Monday due to the risk that heavy snow and ice could cause the buildings to collapse, according to the TT news agency.

A police helicopter was also surveying possible roof damage to a building adjoined to the Gothenburg central station, TT said.

A number of buildings have collapsed across Sweden in recent days and several people have been killed and injured.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News