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Heavy snowfalls again caused chaos on many highways in Germany on Tuesday night.

The A2 was hit particularly hard: the traffic jam near Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia caused by heavy snowfall had not cleared up until early Tuesday morning.

In the freezing cold, the driver and passengers spent the whole night and thus more than twelve hours in their stuck vehicles.

As reported by the police in Minden, numerous emergency calls were received from broken-down drivers during the night.

"Some had run out of fuel, some just wanted information about when it was finally going to continue," said a police spokesman for Minden-Lübbecke.

Officials were on duty at the Porta Westfalica truck stop on the A2 because it was completely overcrowded.

"It must have gone haywire," said the spokesman.

The traffic jam also affected the surrounding streets.

The traffic in the direction of Bad Oeynhausen was backed up so much that a tunnel had to be closed because of the increased exhaust gas values.

Numerous drivers tried to avoid the traffic jam there.

No getting through: Autobahn 2 near Bielefeld

Source: dpa / Festim Beqiri

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As early as Monday afternoon, trucks got stuck on the highway because of the snow.

The backwater meanwhile stretched over 37 kilometers.

The autobahn was closed in both directions - at times more than 70 kilometers of traffic jams formed around Bielefeld.

Despite a diversion via the A33, the situation hardly eased on Tuesday night, as a police spokeswoman said.

"It will be a long time before the ball has dissolved," said the spokeswoman.

The ADAC recommended driving around the area extensively.

All rest areas are busy.

According to the police, the situation near Dortmund, where the A2 was also blocked, was a little less dramatic.

Dozens of trucks got stuck on the road in the direction of Oberhausen on Monday afternoon and had to be freed by the technical relief organization, the police said.

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In the meantime, according to the situation center, the backwater was ten kilometers long, but it broke up during the night.

The police registered 340 violations of a truck driving ban - actually vehicles up to 7.5 tons were not allowed to be on the highway until 10 p.m.

The police warned the short message service Twitter against driving on the A2 in the direction of Oberhausen.

The roadways are "mirror-smooth".

The technical relief organization and the fire brigade took care of the drivers in both traffic jams and distributed hot drinks.

The situation was chaotic on other motorways as well.

On the A10 near Spreeau in Brandenburg, two trucks stood across the slippery road during the night and could neither go forward nor back, as a police spokeswoman said.

On the A4 in East Hesse, a traffic jam had meanwhile cleared up during the night - according to the police, some drivers there had stayed in their cars for 15 hours.

In some cases, the traffic got back on its feet slowly because police officers had to wake up truck drivers who had missed the waiting time.

Hope to relax after a lot of snow in Saxony-Anhalt

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After the heavy snowfall, it is important in Saxony-Anhalt to keep the roads and rails free for traffic across the country.

At the start of the week, snow drifts had repeatedly hampered the work of the winter services.

Meanwhile, concerns about the homeless are growing, especially given the freezing temperatures.

As a spokeswoman for the station mission in Magdeburg described, mainly homeless people come to protect themselves from the snow and cold.

She referred to a particular emergency, since fewer people than usual are likely to be in a room at the same time due to the corona pandemic.

In the meantime, the evangelical city mission in Halle said that, in view of the onset of winter, people had reported to the warming room, for example, to spontaneously donate to those in need.

A spokesman for Diakonie Mitteldeutschland appealed to society not to avert its gaze from the needy, especially when it is freezing cold, and to offer them concrete help.

Further frosty temperatures in Thuringia

The residents of Thuringia also have to be prepared for winter weather and related problems on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Education, schools in some districts and cities are still closed on Tuesday.

For example, schools in Erfurt, Weimar, Jena and Gera should not open.

On Monday there were no lessons anywhere in Thuringia due to the weather.

A high blanket of snow lay over large parts of the country, so that train and bus traffic was also severely restricted.

In the closed schools, there is no emergency care and no face-to-face lessons for groups of students for whom this is possible under the current Corona rules.

Meanwhile, the Deutsche Post DHL Group announced that it would be delivering letters and parcels again on Tuesday if the weather and road conditions improve.

Because of the large amount of snow, delivery was waived across the board in the Free State on Monday, according to the company, with a few exceptions.

According to the German Weather Service (DWD), heavy clouds and occasional snowfall can be expected in Thuringia on Tuesday.

It should loosen up in the second half of the day.

Freezing temperatures between twelve and eight degrees are expected.

Saxony: Hope for relaxation in public transport after snow chaos

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After the heavy snowfall with drifts, the transport companies in Saxony hope that the situation will normalize.

“The main routes in particular are cleared of snow at night.

We also have clearing vehicles from the city cleaning service in use, ”said the spokesman for the Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe, Marc Backhaus.

Meter by meter, the tracks should be cleared.

"We hope for an emergency operation on Tuesday, but normal operation is not yet in sight," explained Backhaus.

In addition to the snowfall, the biggest problem was the strong wind, which had caused strong winds on Monday.

As a result, all tram and bus traffic in the trade fair city had been stopped, and the regional buses did not run in the region.

Even in Dresden and Chemnitz, public transport passengers cannot yet expect regular operation.

"We hope for stability in operations, but there will still be delays on some connections," emphasized Falk Lösch from the Dresden transport company.

It takes a lot of work to free the tracks from the enormous amounts of snow.

The weather forecast makes the transport companies confident.

According to the German Weather Service, no new snow should come in the next few days.

However, the white splendor is retained, because it will be extremely frosty until the weekend.

During the day the temperatures hardly rose above minus seven degrees, at night double-digit values ​​below zero can be expected.

It could be particularly cold on Wednesday night.

If it clears up, local severe frost with minus 20 degrees is possible.

"A new band is emerging: a small but very heavy one"

Due to snow and frost, face-to-face classes have been canceled for Tuesday at most schools in Lower Saxony.

The districts reported this almost everywhere, with the exception of the north of the country with the Elbe-Weser triangle and East Friesland.

The failure affects the general education schools and the vocational schools, it said.

Emergency care is guaranteed.

The closure of the schools does not mean that there are no classes.

Homeschooling takes place.

Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer appealed to the citizens of northern and central Germany to refrain from traveling at least until Wednesday.

"In such extreme conditions, even the best point heating and the best clearing vehicle can reach their limits," said the CSU politician to the newspapers of the Funke media group (Tuesday).

"We are working hard to get the north-south connections free - that we can at least drive to a limited extent," he announced on "Bild Live".

“A new band is emerging: a small but very heavy one.

Tuesday and Wednesday we will get a lot of snow on the Baltic Sea and Rügen and above all stormy conditions, ”the minister continued.

But frost is also becoming a challenge, for example in eastern Germany.

"If you get into a skid, you should pay attention to three things"

Thomas Müther from ADAC Nordrhein advises anyone who currently has to get into their car despite extreme weather conditions, shouldn't just prepare well.

Drivers should also know how to react if they suddenly skid despite being careful when driving.

Source: WORLD / Felicia Pochhammer

The German Weather Service (DWD) warned of heavy snowfall up to 40 centimeters and snow drifts from Tuesday night, especially in Ostholstein and neighboring districts.

The background for the expected sustained snowfalls and snow drifts in parts of Schleswig-Holstein is primarily the so-called lake effect, as meteorologist Frank Böttcher explained on Monday.

The strong wind brings moisture over the Baltic Sea, which falls over land as snow.

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Compared to the weekend, the snowfall should decrease overall in the coming days.

The big issue will then be the severe frost - especially at night.

In central and eastern Germany, night frosts of minus 18 degrees should not be uncommon, said meteorologist Martin Jonas.

With wind and dry air, the perceived temperature can even drop to minus 30 degrees at night.

Experts: Severe frost is not a problem for nature

The severe frost with double-digit minus degrees in the next few days does not pose a problem for nature. "Plants and animals are also prepared for hard winters," said Nabu spokeswoman Birgit Königs, "no stocks collapse, even if individual animals are this winter not survive. ”From nature's point of view, this is even a sensible process to guarantee species conservation with healthy animals in the next generation.

Animals such as deer or wild boar would of course take longer to search for food in snow and ice, said Königs.

The kingfisher will have problems because it needs open streams and rivers for its food search and because of its low weight cannot add too much.

In general, however, nature has developed many effective strategies against severe cold: trees pull the nutrients from the leaves into the trunk and then shed the leaves, animals look for sheltered places or fall into hibernation like the hedgehog and bat or hibernation like the badger .

Hard winters also help to decimate pests such as the bark beetle, said Friedrich Louen from the Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz NRW.

Bark beetle larvae and pupae that have nested under spruce bark suffer from severe frost and die from around minus four degrees, Louen said.

The same applies to young beetles from minus seven degrees.

However, a significant part of between ten and 40 percent of the bark beetle population does not overwinter in the tree, but in the ground, where it is better protected.

Therefore, the severe frost brings relief when it comes to bark beetles, but by no means the all-clear.

A popular guest on balconies and in gardens - the squirrel - currently rests mostly in its sheltered quarters, but also wakes up again and again and looks for nuts and other food from the previously created storage hiding places.