Eastern village at 1,800-meter altitude ‘swallowed’ by snow

MUŞ

A village in the eastern province of Muş has been completely blanketed in snow due to continuous precipitation, with villagers opening small tunnels to reach the surface and visit their neighbors or look after their stables.

“I have not seen such snowfall for the last 30 years. It swallowed the entire village,” Sabri Yöndem, a 79-year-old resident of the Yukarıyongalı village, told the İhlas News Agency.

The village has a population of around 700 residents and is located at an altitude of about 1,800 meters.

“I start the day shoveling the snow and opening tunnels to reach the stables to feed animals,” he added.

Eyüp Omur is another villager that resides in one of the 100 houses in the village. “While we were waiting for the spring to come, snow buried everything in the village in March,” he noted.

Yukarıyongalı is one of the 325 villages of the province with roads blocked with snow. Besides Muş, some four other eastern provinces and one northern province canceled face-to-face education due to perpetual precipitation across the country.

The Turkish State Meteorological Service repeated its warning for avalanche and frost in the country’s east and strong winds in the west.

After four days of heavy snowfalls, life turned back to normal in Istanbul, with commuters overcrowding the public transport vehicles and the traffic density surpassing 50 percent at the early hours of March 14.

The “orange code,” which is a warning for citizens to be aware of danger due to severe weather conditions,” for Turkey’s most populous city was lifted on early March 14.

“Istanbul will witness rainfall on March 17 and maybe sleet at the weekend,” said Orhan Şen, a prominent meteorologist.